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See Page 112. 


-Cfte 25ulibte S&ooftjtf 


THE 

RESPONSIBILITIES OP 
BUDDIE 


BY 

ANNA CHAPIN RAY 

Author op the “Teddy” Books, the “Sidney” Books, 
“Buddie at Gray Butte’s Camp,” etc. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY 
HARRIET Roosevelt] richards 


BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1913 


Copyright^ 1913^ 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 

Published, September, 1913 


Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co. Norwood, Mass. , U.S.A. 
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 




©CI,A354591 




CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I A Wreck and a Rescue .... 1 

II Scotch Welcome 13 

III The New Boy at School .... 26 

IV At the Football Field .... 37 

V Buddie’s Electric Concert ... 49 

VI Before the Bear Pits .... 63 

VII A Two-step and a Retreat ... 75 

VIII For the Good of the Team ... 87 

IX The Game 100 

X Ebenezer Meets an Old Friend . 113 

XI Concerning Chubbie 125 

XII Porter 137 

Xin Kent’s Ugly Duckling 149 

XIV The Sesquipedalian News . . . 160 

XV The Two Cousins 172 

XVI Ebenezer Gets Lost 184 

XVII At Christmas 195 

XVIII Being a Brother 207 

XIX The Editor-in-Chief 220 

XX A Poet on Skis 233 

XXI Both Ducklings are Hatched . . 244 
XXn Buddie’s Broken Nose ..... 254 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


Time was up, and the score a tie . . . Frontispiece ^ 

She reminded him of somebody he had 

seen somewhere or other Page 72 

‘‘ Does that mean that you wish I’d go ? ” ^ 

she queried “168 

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miration of his friend “ 241 


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4 


CHAPTER ONE 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 

T WO times inside of one six months was a good 
deal, even for a boy like Buddie. 

Afterwards, Buddie used to say, he had had his own 
fair share of hair-breadth escapes. What was more, 
he rather gloated on the memory of them, and set 
them off to his boy friends with halos of differing 
colours, all distressingly lurid and arresting to the 
boy attention. 

In the time of them, though — But that is an- 
other story, and belongs to the Buddie of it. Being 
Buddie, he shut his teeth, and sat tight, and took 
things as they came. 

The first one had been a railway wreck, one night 
when Buddie and his father, with Chubbie Neal, had 
been travelling westward, to spend the summer in 
Aunt Julia’s husband’s engineering camp. There 
had been a general smashing of cars and tearing of 
track; but the passengers had escaped, unhurt. 
Indeed, Ebenezer, in the baggage car, had scarcely 
looked up from the bone that he was gnawing. 
Two days of joggling and rattling across country 
had made him indifferent to jolts and bounces of 
almost any sort. Buddie had taken things more 
seriously, though; had shown the keenest sort of 
interest, not only in the wreck, but in the way the 
powers of the railway had dragged the train out of it. 
1 


2 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Three months later, he was once more talking it 
over with Chubbie, talking it over, in the intervals of 
pointing out to Chubbie the greatest glories of the 
New York water front. 

“It was a smash, all right,” he observed thought- 
fully, his eyes on the waves that danced along beside 
them. “I never shall forget the minute we struck. 
What was the first thing you thought about. Chub ?” 

Like most boys, Chubbie had his hours of being 
distressingly matter-of-fact. Besides, the whole 
thing was so far in the past that he saw no need of 
putting on a sentiment he did not feel. Therefore, — 

“My new hat. I had left it in the observation 
car, and I didn’t want it to be spoiled,” he said 
literally. 

Buddie’s reply evidently was framed for the ques- 
tion that, in common decency, Chubbie should have 
flung back at him. Chubbie failing, he gave it, just 
the same. 

“I thought of Aunt Julia and of Ebenezer,” he said, 
and his voice sounded sanctimonious. 

Chubbie resolved to take it out of him. The 
mood of sanctity did not often last long with Buddie ; 
but Chubbie judged it disagreeable, while it lasted. 

“Bet you thought about Ebenezer first, though,” 
he said. 

Buddie changed the subject. All in all, he felt 
it was high time. 

“Look back. It is our last chance to see into the 
Harlem,” he advised his companion. “Those are 
the Palisades, up there. That woody point is 
Castle Point. You have heard of Stevens Institute, 
I suppose ? ” 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 


3 


And Chubbie fell silent, aware of being put in his 
place. After all, though, it was not his fault that he 
had never seen New York until three or four days 
ago. Neither was it any especial credit to Buddie 
that he had been born there. One’s parents settled 
things like that ; it wasn’t Buddie’s doing. 

“Ever been down our harbour ?” he asked Buddie, 
after an interval. 

Buddie was staring after a passing freighter. 

“Which is that?” he queried negligently. 

“Boston, of course.” Chubbie’s voice began to 
sound huffy, and the huffiness did not blend very well 
with the pompous accent he tried to give to the name 
of his own city. 

“No.” There was a suspicion of a final, a disdain- 
ful p upon the single syllable. Then Buddie began 
whistling softly to himself. 

Chubbie felt goaded to retort. 

“Well, it’s awfully worth seeing.” 

“As good as this?” Buddie’s glance roved over 
the broad blue river and the flanking heights, as if it 
had all been a part of his great grandfather’s back 
pasture, his ancestral ownership of it all too sure a 
thing to call for comment. 

“Hh!” Then Thomas Neal, known to his in- 
timates as Chubbie, stuck his fists into his pockets 
and walked away from his companion. From all 
eternity, Hh ! has been the final word of a discussion, 
final and unanswerable. 

Buddie knew its value. On that account, he 
waited where he was, until Chubbie had had a little 
time to recover from his feelings. 

Indeed, it was a lasting grievance to Buddie that 


4 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


his friend had feelings. He himself was not aware of 
possessing any ; lacking experience of them, he also 
lacked sympathy, and Chubbie’s periods of turning 
dumb, or of clambering upon the stilts of his dignity 
seemed to Buddie a great waste of time. When, 
upon occasion, things went wrong, Buddie could be 
most gloriously cross. He could not be glum and 
superior, to save his life, could not become a blighted 
being under any conditions whatsoever. 

Chubbie could. Now and then, what was worse, 
he did it. Teresa said he had good reasons; but 
she was a girl, and not a judge. Anyway, Buddie 
objected. He especially objected now, when 
Chubbie turned silent, and refused to thrill at the 
majesty of the North River frontage. Boston ! 
It hadn’t the Palisades, nor the apartment houses at 
Riverside Park, nor the Chelsea Docks, nor — Then 
Buddie lost count of the attractions. The Lusitania 
was just coming out into the stream ahead of them ; 
and, at Tom’s heels, he went racing forward to the 
bow. 

At the suggestion of his father, Buddie, that morn- 
ing, had been giving his friend a geography lesson by 
way of one of the little boats that circle Manhattan 
Island. Chubbie’s four days in their home had suc- 
ceeded in making an utter tangle of all his earlier . 
notions of New York; had taken away all of his 
sense of distances and most of his sense of direction. 
Chubbie was to be their guest, all winter. He was 
expected to be Buddie’s constant chum, though 
Buddie had his doubts. 

“It takes more than nicknames that sound some- 
thing alike, and rooms opening out of each other to 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 


5 


make a fellow chums,” he had explained to the house- 
keeper, the night of their home-coming. “Daddy 
wanted him, so here he is; but I’m blessed if I see 
where my good of it is coming in.” 

The housekeeper had smiled tolerantly. That 
was her specialty, that, and finding out what people 
liked to eat, and seeing that the newspapers were 
picked up off the carpet. Her name was Myles, 
and she always added that it was to be spelled with 
a y, 

“You may find you have entertained an angel, 
unawares,” she answered Buddie. 

Buddie sniffed. 

“Chub an angel ! Not on your life ! ” 

Miss Myles threw emphasis on her suggestion. 
She believed it was her duty, next to that of the 
dinner and the carpets, to sow seeds in Buddie. 

“Unawares,” she persisted, still smiling. 

Buddie brushed the seeds away. 

“Not much unawares about it,” he retorted 
sturdily. “After living ten weeks or so in the same 
camp, you’re pretty much aware of what sort a fellow 
is. Chub may be all right ; but he isn’t cut off short 
behind the ears, and fitted up with wings. He’s 
just boy, and not any angel about it. Anyhow, he’s 
here to stay, all winter. I suppose Daddy had 
something up his sleeve, when he asked him to come. 
That’s one good thing about Daddy; you can be 
sure he always has a reason back of him.” 

Daddy’s first reason, to all seeming, had been the 
teaching Tom to know his way around New York, to 
know New York as a mere city to be lived in and 
enjoyed, not as one of the wonders of the world. 


6 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


That would come later, Daddy argued, come after 
Tom had learned to consider himself old friends with 
the things that went into the list of wonders. For 
the present, he must be taught to feel at home in the 
streets and among the parks and buildings where his 
next year was to be spent. On that account. Daddy 
took him out, each morning in the motor car. 

Daddy was a doctor whose practice was by no 
means confined to the upper west side. Down among 
the east-side tenements, there was a wide-spread 
theory that Dr. AngelFs name had come out of his 
professional life, rather than been inherited from his 
grandsires. In and out about certain of the down- 
town charities. Dr. AngelFs car was as well known as 
the bulkier motors of the fire department and the 
police patrol, as well known and infinitely better 
loved. And, for four days now, Chubbie had spent 
his mornings in being whirred to and fro and up and 
down the city at Dr. Angell’s side, listening to his 
host’s crisp lectures on the more important land- 
marks, with a conscientious effort for attention which, 
from its very earnestness, only succeeded in mud- 
dling him the more. That was the usual effect of 
Chubbie’s conscience; it was at once his handicap 
and his besetting sin. 

“School to-morrow, Buddie, so this is your last 
free day. I think you’d better take Tom around the 
rivers, this morning. There’s a boat at ten, or so; 
it goes up East River, and through the Harlem. I’ve 
left a map on the table in the office. Good luck to 
you ! Yes, Miss Myles. Tell him to hold the wire.” 
And, with a nod and a wave of the hand. Daddy was 
off. 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 


7 


Fifteen minutes later, the boys were also off. 
Buddie knew his city like a book ; Daddy had seen 
to that. However, as it chanced, Buddie had never 
taken the full circuit of the water fronts, and his 
father’s plan met with his full approval. The 
approval increased when he went in search of the 
map, and found a box of goodies left on top of 
it. Tom, following at his heels, suggested that the 
goodies might not be meant for them. Buddie 
knew his father better, though, so he scoffed at 
Tom’s misgivings, crammed the box into one 
pocket, the map into another, stooped to embrace 
Ebenezer who was prancing clumsily upon the 
threshold, by way of suggesting his willingness to 
be one of the party, and, an instant later, went 
tearing down the steps and down the street, to 
catch the first car which would take them to the 
Battery. 

Of course, they were at the Battery and on board 
their small steamer long and long before they needed 
to be leaving home. Still, that was no matter. 
There always were things enough to be seen, down on 
the Battery, Buddie explained to Tom as obligingly 
as if a good portion of his time had been spent 
lounging beside the gray sea wall. To be sure, it 
was only the second time that Buddie had been down 
there ; but he loved to explain things, and Tom was 
in no position to contradict him. Happily, too, the 
facts bore out his statement. Before their boat had 
whistled for the starting, two ferries barely had es- 
caped collision on the water, and a man had been 
arrested on the land close by. Buddie, watching, 
knew the thrill of the successful showman. New 


8 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


York was a great old place, after all, greater than 
Boston. Chubbie could not fail to be impressed. 

And Chubbie was impressed. What boy could 
help it, watching for the first time the busy cyclorama 
which whirls and whirls its constant changes around 
the pivot of the Battery : that open bit of park, 
bordered with buzzing lines of trams, crossed with 
the clumsy cobweb of the elevated railways, backed 
by the heavy walls of brick and stone and terra 
cotta, and looking out across the shining reaches of 
the upper bay where every sort of craft, from motor 
launch to giant liner, was riding on the gray-blue 
waters ? 

He was still impressed, though after a different 
fashion, as their little boat turned into the shabby 
mouth of East River and came under the monstrous 
bridges which, one after one, arch the stream. And, 
once they were threading their way through the 
boiling eddies of Hell Gate, both the boys were 
ready to admit again that even town life has its 
thrills. Afterwards, the narrow little stream of 
Harlem River was so deadly by comparison that 
Chubbie’s enthusiasm seemed to die out, beyond all 
chance of resurrection, and he gazed with supreme 
indifference upon the broad stretches of the lower 
Hudson, when at last they fioated out upon its tide. 

The coming of the Lusitania, though, relaxed his 
indifference, and turned him from critical being 
back into the semblance of plain, mortal boy. 

Side by side in their little boat, the two boys 
watched the monster sliding out from her berth in 
the great gray docks, watched her swing about and 
point her nose down-stream. Just ahead of her, a 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 


9 


ferry was making frantic efforts to get out of her way 
and, at the same time, to escape the string of laden 
barges which were being towed up stream. Beyond 
again, a second ferry was trying to dodge between 
the last one of the barges and a transport loaded to 
the Plimsoll mark with railway freight cars. 

Buddie whistled. 

“That’s a narrow squeak, for sure,” he said. “I 
thought for a fact she was going to bump, that last 
time. Come along down here. Chub. We can see 
her best, if we go astern. Shame we’re running quite 
so fast ! I’d like to watch — ” 

The words died on Buddie’s tongue, cut in two by 
a thudding jar and a crash of timbers. Tom’s first 
idea was that they had run aground; but Buddie 
knew the river better. He whirled about to face 
their bows. Then he caught Tom by the arm. 

“Look !” he said. 

Tom looked. He knew the tone in Buddie’s 
voice. He had heard it before, on a night in the 
previous summer when a member of their camping 
party, lost in a fog and fallen down a precipice, had 
lingered, wavering, upon the nearer side of death. 
The same note echoed now in Buddie’s single word, 
and Tom, looking, understood. It was not the ferry 
who had bumped, that time, but they, themselves. 
Their flimsy, swiftly moving bows, cr.c*gnt in the 
wash of the great liner swinging out behind them, 
had gone crashing into the loaded transport. The 
transport felt the blow scarcely more than an 
ordinary rowboat would have felt collision with a 
mechanical toy ; but the bows where the two boys 
had but just been standing were now a mass of 


10 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


crumpled wreckage, and already the deck under 
their feet was tilting sharply forward, downward. 
No boy of even moderate intelligence could fail to 
realize the menace in that tilt. 

As a matter of course, during the next few minutes, 
there was chaos. To the boys, it seemed impossible 
to think anything very clearly, so full was the air of 
whistlings, and shouts, and of cries of contrary in- 
structions. Then Buddie took a fresh grip upon his 
common sense. 

“This is a good deal worse than the other time. 
Chub,” he said. “Still, we came out on top before, 
so we’ll chance it again. Let’s each of us hang to one 
of those benches. They ought to float, and, anyhow, 
we both of us can swim.” 

And swim they did. They had to. Their little 
ship quietly sank out from under them, leaving a 
score of people bobbing around in the water, clinging 
to chairs and benches, to empty packing-boxes and 
to broken bits of rail. Passengers had been few, 
that morning ; there were no children, and only two 
women, who took their ducking like true sports. 
It was very sudden, it was very disconcerting, it was 
very, very wet; but, save for the nearness of the 
Lusitania, there was no especial danger, granted 
that one had sense to keep his head above water and 
hold to the nearest piece of wood. 

Indeed, it seemed a miracle that so many rescuing 
parties could be on the spot at once, a boat on an 
average to every person, and three or four left over, 
to pick up any wreckage that looked as if it might be 
worth the saving. 

Buddie, however, had his own notions of the proper 


A WRECK AND A RESCUE 


11 


etiquette of shipwrecks. He considered it more 
than a little disappointing, more than a little con- 
trary to the accepted code, when, almost as soon as 
he had struck the water, he felt himself gripped in 
two burly arms and hauled somehow, anyhow, on 
board a motor boat which had come chugging up 
behind him. A sudden recollection of the pro- 
prieties of the hour led him to kick out vaguely in 
the direction of his captor. However, as he had been 
soaking in the water for a good three minutes, and 
as he had put on his first long trousers, just three 
days before, the aim and fervour of his kick were not 
precisely what he had hoped to make of them. 
Nevertheless, true to his code, — 

“Save — my comrade — first!” he spluttered 
magnificently. 

To his extreme surprise, a great, jovial laugh shook 
the burly shoulders of his captor. 

“We’ve got him, youngster, safe and sound. 
Good for you, though ! You’re the right sort of stuff.” 

Then the accent changed, grew curt and crisp. 

“Run her ashore, Joe, as fast as you can make 
our pier. These fellows must be put into dry 
clothes as soon as we can get some.” 

Buddie, to his own vast shame, was conscious of 
feeling rather shaky, rather winded. Girl trick, 
he told himself savagely, to get funky and wobble, 
once the worst was over. His captor had dropped 
him into the bottom of the launch, much as one 
drops a heavy fish, and now the owner of the voice 
was throwing a dry overcoat across him, to keep 
out the biting breeze. Buddie nodded his thanks 
up into a pair of steady eyes. 


12 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“All right, old man ?” 

“Right, oh,” Buddie responded sturdily. Then 
he turned on his elbow. “I say, Chub,” he de- 
manded, as tranquilly as if their earlier talk had had 
no interruption; “can you show the equal of this 
rescue in your Bawston harbour ? ” 


CHAPTER TWO 


SCOTCH WELCOME 

A CHUCKLE answered him. 

Not from Tom, though. Tom was too busy, 
sitting up and wiping the water out of his hair, to 
pay any especial attention to Buddie’s queries. 
The chuckle had a girlish quality ; it threatened to 
become a little bit hysterical, and Buddie cast a 
wondering glance in its direction. Being a boy, 
he could not realize the disastrous result of his late 
accident upon feminine nerves. 

His glance fell on a young girl, pretty in spite of a 
pug nose and a good-sized mouth, pretty, above all, 
from her evident perfect health and sunny temper. 
Her eyes were bright brown and honest, her curly 
hair showed glints of tawny red, her clothes were 
bright brown, the exact colour of her eyes, and cut 
well enough to gratify even Buddie’s critical taste. 
All in all, he liked her. He did not like her merri- 
ment, though. It seemed to him too large to fit the 
size of his joke, and it gave him an uncomfortable 
sense that perhaps she was laughing at him, and 
not at his joke at all. He eyed her a bit sternly, 
while he made a futile pluck at the sodden ruin which 
had been his collar. 

The girl read rebuke into the gesture. She tried 
to look serious; but a little squeak, like a laugh 
smothered in its babyhood: this betrayed her. 

13 


14 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


She turned scarlet. Then she dismissed pretences, 
and laughed out frankly. 

“Really, I can’t help it,” she explained. “It’s 
horrid of me ; but you were so funny.” 

“I’m glad you think so,” Buddie said shortly, for 
the girl seemed to him to be lacking in respect. 
What if he was all wet and soggy ? She was a girl, 
and younger than he was; at least, she was a good 
deal smaller. Besides, it was not at all nice to have 
wet clothes sticking all over one, tight, tight, and 
then to have the river wind strike in across the wet- 
ness. 

“But you were almost drowned,” the girl rebuked 
herself. 

“I can swim,” Buddie said, still quite shortly. 

“How far? Besides, what if the Lusitania had 
caught you and screwed you into little pieces ?” she 
reminded him sternly, and now Buddie was uncom- 
fortably aware that her rebuke was meant for him. 

Buddie made a hasty snatch after his manners. 

“I’m very much obliged to you, of course,” he 
remarked properly. 

His accent was rather grudging, though, after all, 
and the brown eyes snapped. But the fire went out 
in laughter. 

“You don’t sound so, I must say.” Then the 
laughter mastered her completely. “Do you al- 
ways talk out of a Sunday-school book, when things 
happen?” she queried. “It sounds magnificent; 
but it must be awfully hard to remember.” 

“What do you mean ?” 

Then he turned scarlet, for in her reply he recog- 
nized the echo of his own voice and manner. 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


15 


“‘Save — my comrade — first!”* she told him. 

Buddie stood up suddenly, and fell to plucking at 
his wet clothes which stuck to him too tight to allow 
much ease in moving. 

“I must go and see to Chub,” he said curtly. 

Instantly the girl’s face changed. She made a 
swift snatch at his hand, as if to stay his steps. 

“He’s all right. Daddy is looking out for him; 
they’re talking away like anything.” 

Buddie remained obdurate. 

“I must go to thank your father.” 

“Nonsense I It’s only that you are cross. I 
don’t much blame you, though ; it was horrid of me 
to laugh. I suppose it is because I was so frightened 
that I had to do something to let it off, and it’s more 
decent to laugh than cry.” 

Buddie, standing stiffly before her, looked down 
into her brown eyes, read their honest penitence, and 
relented. 

“Perhaps,” he said. 

A queer, wavering smile came at the corners of the 
girl’s red lips. Then, — 

“You needn’t think I’ll give you the chance to 
judge,” she told him dauntlessly, as she blinked 
away the tears which all along had been dangerously 
near the surface. The next instant, she dismissed 
emotion and became practical. “Sit down,” she 
ordered him. “You will catch your death of cold, 
standing up there in the wind. Huddle down here 
behind the rail, and pull that coat over you. So !” 
She patted it into place. “What was wrong, any- 
how 

Buddie glanced out at the dozen boats of rescue, 


16 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


now making full speed from the scene of the ac- 
cident, rushing to get their dripping human freight 
to shelter. 

“A shipwreck, I should call it,” he answered un- 
concernedly. 

A ripple of laughter swept over her again. Bud- 
die, for the life of him, could not tell how much of 
it was nerves, how much a sense of humour. 

“You sound as if you had one, every two or three 
days,” she said to him. 

Buddie’s unconcern increased. He felt it was his 
only way to prove his masculine dominance. It was 
not good to sit in a soggy bundle of wet clothes, 
while the little streams of water drizzled from his 
hair, and to have the mocking brown eyes of a pretty 
girl upon him, especially when the pretty girl was a 
total stranger who had never seen him in his more 
normal moments. His only chance to create a 
proper impression was to carry things off with a high, 
high hand. 

“No; not so bad as that,” he reassured her 
affably. “I was in a railway wreck, though, just 
last June.” 

“Really?” The brown eyes widened. “Were 
many people killed ? ” 

Considering the fact, and also considering the 
impression he was seeking to create, Buddie would 
have chosen another question. However, — 

“Not so many as there might have been,” he made 
guarded answer. 

“How many?” the girl asked. Really, she was 
very persistent. 

“Well, one man had his nose broken,” Buddie 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


17 


said slowly; then his accent brightened. “But you 
just ought to have seen the cars ! ” 

“That’s more than you can say of your boat.” 

Buddie, swaddled in the coat, turned clumsily to 
glance over his shoulder. 

“By the way, what became of her?” he asked, 
for he had been too busy thinking about Chubbie, 
and the benches, and all that, and then about making 
some sort of a good impression on the girl, to waste 
much question on the fate of their small steamboat. 

“Sitting in the sand at the bottom of the river.” 

Buddie whitened until it showed even underneath 
his summer’s coat of tan. 

“Sunk?” 

“Yes. Not fifteen minutes after you struck.” 

“And the people on her?” The question came 
tumbling out of Buddie’s mouth as if he could not 
form the words fast enough. 

“Picked up.” The girl had the sense to give her 
answer crisply. 

“Everybody ?” 

“Yes. There were heaps of boats there, almost 
as soon as you had struck. Everybody had been 
watching, you see. You were caught in a trap. 
It wasn’t your fault, they said. It just happened ; 
but it was sure to come. Daddy had Joe go over all 
the place, to make sure there weren’t any others 
left in the water. Were there many on board ? ” 

“No; only a few. Chub and I both wondered 
why there weren’t any more.” Buddie spoke a bit 
unsteadily, for the shock was just beginning to tell 
on him. 

The girl might have been older than she looked. 


18 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Anyway, she saw his emotion, and she promptly 
did her best to scatter it. 

“About the boat going down and the cars being 
left : you know what the negro porter said ? ” she 
queried. 

Buddie shook his head. In some way or other, 
the old story had escaped him. 

“‘If you’re killed on land, dere you am,’” she 
quoted; “‘but, if you’re killed on water, where am 
you ? ’ Yes, daddy ? ” 

At her change of tone, Buddie looked up into the 
kindly face that was bent above him. 

“All right, over here the owner of the face said 
cheerily. “Your chum is asking.” 

“Is he — ?” Buddie’s anxiety came back upon 
him. Chubbie was his guest, and so, in a sense, his 
charge. 

“Very wet, and a good deal cold. Otherwise, he 
is all right. You both of you had a close call. If 
you hadn’t struck the transport as you did — Still, 
there is no especial sense in talking about that. 
And you could swim, too.” 

“Like a fish.” 

“So I noticed. You were better at that than any 
of the others.” He turned to smile at his young 
daughter. “Now you see why I insisted on the 
swimming lessons, Madge ?” 

“Didn’t she want them?” Buddie inquired, with 
sudden curiosity, for the girl looked to him too good 
a sport to hold back from anything of the kind that 
offered. 

Her father saved her the confession. 

“At first, she thought she didn’t; but now she’s 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


19 


coming around. It’s rather necessary, though, when 
we spend so much time on the water. But tell me, 
are you frozen ? ” 

Buddie fibbed valiantly. 

“Not a bit.” 

The man eyed him keenly. 

“Mm ! Well. Anyhow, I like your grit. Still, 
I wish I had something hot to give you ; but we only 
came out for an hour, and we have nothing on board. 
That reminds me.” He pulled himself up short. 
“We shall be ashore, in another five minutes; my 
car is waiting for us, and I want to rush you off for 
dry clothes and something hot inside you. If you’ll 
tell me your father’s name and address. I’ll have my 
man telephone him that you are all right. Then, 
if he hears about the accident, he won’t begin to 
worry.” 

“That’s a good scheme.” Buddie’s accent was 
approving. Then he added loyally, “Still, Daddy’s 
no worrier.” 

The man smiled a little. The accident had been 
a bad one, and Buddie, it seemed to him, was well 
worth worrying about. 

“It might depend a little on the circumstances,” 
he said. “But where shall we telephone?” 

“Dr. Angell.” And Buddie named the street and 
number. 

“Dr. Ernest Angell?” The question came 
swiftly, and with a totally new accent. 

“That’s Daddy, for sure,” Buddie said serenely. 
“Know him ?” 

“I know about him.” 

“ Honestly ? ” 


20 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


The man smiled again. At first glance, Buddie 
had thought him rather ugly. His smile, though, 
changed him utterly. Buddie, seeing the change, 
was conscious of a lurking regret that his rescuer had 
not proved to be one of Daddy’s oldest friends. 
And the voice matched the smile, as the man said, — 

“Who doesn’t? It was your father, then, who 
saved the Asbilt baby.” And he mentioned a case 
famous the country over. 

Buddie assented blankly, though. Daddy was 
busy, and, besides, he was not the man to babble his 
professional honours and triumphs into the ears of 
his young son. Therefore, — 

“I s’pose so,” the young son made calm response. 
“He’s always busy over something.” Then he 
changed the subject. “This your own boat?” 

“Yes.” 

Buddie wiped at the water, still trickling down 
across his nose and eyebrows, and ran an appraising 
eye across the little craft. 

“She’s a beauty one. I like her line. Can’t 
you run her, yourself ? ” 

“I can. It’s rather messy, though, so I generally 
leave it to Joe. You like boats, then ?” 

“You bet ! ” Buddie replied downrightly. “I 
used to have one, when I was at Aunt Julia’s ; and, 
last summer when we were out in my uncle’s camp, 
Indian Bill taught us to shoot rapids.” 

The girl, Madge, pricked up her ears. 

“Tell us about it; do ! ” she urged. 

Her father interposed. 

“Some other time, Madge. We’re ashore now, 
and we can’t waste time, talking.” Then he turned 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


21 


back to Buddie. “And your friend? Where shall 
we telephone for him ? ” 

“Oh, to our house.” 

“Is he your brother, then ?” 

Buddie shook his head. 

“No; just company.” Then he ended, in an 
outburst of such exceeding frankness that it left his 
companions gasping, “Nobody knows what got into 
Daddy; but he’s invited him for a whole year.” 

When the chugging motors stopped beside the 
pier, their host lost his dependence upon Joe and took 
command. A car came sliding down to meet them ; 
the chauffeur was bidden to cover the two boys 
with all the extra rugs in reach ; a footman was sent 
off to the nearest telephone; Madge was ordered 
into the front seat, and Madge’s father, to whom the 
chauffeur spoke as “Mr. Graeme, sir,” packed him- 
self in beside the two boys, to make sure that they 
were snuggled well inside the rugs. Between his 
ideas about what huddling really meant, and the 
swiftness of the car, and the general curiosity of the 
boys as to what would happen next, there was no 
real chance for talk until the house was reached. 
Even then, for yet another hour, conversation was 
practically at a standstill, borne down beneath a tide 
of action that left the boys too busy for any but the 
shortest efforts after talk. 

Once at the house, which seemed to Buddie to have 
a most undue allowance of servants popping up at 
every turn, the two boys were swept away to sepa- 
rate rooms. There they were tubbed and rubbed and 
given hot things to drink, and rubbed again, and 
packed into hot blankets, then taken out and rubbed 


22 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


again and equipped with clothing which, albeit of 
superfine quality, yet lost somewhat of its attractive- 
ness by being large enough for their paternal grand- 
fathers. 

Buddie, clothed to the finish, was surveyed a 
trifie dubiously by his own attendant high priest of 
the toilet. 

“It is hard that the master should be six-foot-two 
in his stockings, I must say,’’ he remarked, as he 
knelt at Buddie’s feet and widened the cuffs about his 
ankles till they reached nearly to his knees. “He’s 
a wonderful careful dresser, too, is the master, and 
gets all his things out from London ; but they don’t 
seem to look just right on you.” Still kneeling, he 
gazed up at Buddie doubtfully. “Size do make a 
vast amount of difference,” he observed. 

Buddie, his eyes upon the mirror opposite, agreed 
with him. He agreed still more, when a duplicate 
high priest of the toilet flung the door open and 
ushered Tom into the room, coupling the ushering 
with the announcement that luncheon was served. 

The eyes of the boys met. Then Buddie rose to 
face the emergency with what, in all probability, was 
the most colossal fib that ever was laid upon the 
altar of human vanity. 

“I’m not hungry,” he said hastily. 

But Mr. Graeme’s voice hailed them from the 
stairtop, and a rustling of frilly skirts betrayed the 
fact that Madge was lurking somewhere, close behind. 

“Come out and show yourselves to an admiring 
public,” he ordered. 

The next minute, a pretty, gray-haired woman 
came hurrying into the hall below, to find out the 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


23 


cause of the sudden roars of laughter. Her husband 
hailed her jovially. 

“Come right up here, mamma, and see the pic- 
ture. By Jove, I’ll have it photographed and sent 
to Poole. Yes, these are our boys that we picked 
out of the river ; nice boys, too, though I must say 
they don’t look it.” 

Nor did they. Indeed, it would be hard to say 
just why a combination of two perfectly nice boys 
and two perfectly nice costumes should produce 
such an appalling result. Mr. Graeme, for whom the 
clothes had been made, was six-feet-two and broad- 
shouldered in proportion. Buddie, at fifteen, was 
short for his age and sturdy. Chubbie, as his 
nickname would indicate to anybody who knows 
boys : Chubbie was taller, and lean as a lath. And 
Chubbie was attired in pale gray tweeds with a 
belted Norfolk coat, while to the afflicted Buddie had 
been assigned a costume of sombre black whose 
tailed coat, reaching nearly to the ground behind 
him, turned him to a cross between a cherub and an 
undertaker. It was no especial wonder that the 
butler fled the dining-room, when they came in. 
It was his solitary way to protect his dignity. 

Between the good things to eat and the size of 
the boy appetites, luncheon was a long affair. Be- 
sides, there was the danger of colliding with one’s 
clothes, even after Mrs. Graeme had arisen from 
the table and helped her guests turn up their sleeves 
far enough to make a knife and fork a possibility. 
Besides again, Madge kept up a running fire of ques- 
tions, and insisted that each one of them should have 
an answer. For all these reasons, the afternoon 


24 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


was well advanced, when they still were sitting over 
the cheese, listening to Buddie’s tales of summer 
camp life, of Indian Bill, of Ebenezer and the timber 
wolf, and of a certain Mr. David Kent who was a 
corker, even if he did paint pictures. 

“David Kent?” Mr. Graeme looked up sharply. 
“You know him ?” 

“He taught me to do handsprings backwards,” 
Buddie answered swiftly, for he recognized the 
accent of his host, the same accent Mr. Graeme had 
used in speaking about Daddy. 

“David Kent ! You lucky youngster !” 

“Sure!” Buddie said serenely. “Want to see 
one ? Oh, hang these clothes ! I’ll have to wait 
till — ” 

But Chubbie launched a terrific kick at him be- 
neath the table, and Buddie fell silent, crushed by 
the realization of his black ingratitude. Before 
Mr. Graeme could make out the cause of Buddie’s 
sudden embarrassment, and so open a safe subject 
for their talk, a footman came hurrying into the 
room. 

“Mr. Graeme, is either of these young men named 
Ernest Angell ?” he demanded. 

Madge giggled. To be sure, the name was rather 
a misfit, almost as bad a one as were the clothes. 

Buddie lifted a blazing countenance from above 
his plate, and flung her a stony glance. Then he 
turned to the footman. 

“Present,” he reported. “What’s doing now?” 

Great as had been his apparent haste, the man 
paused long enough to wipe a smile into the hollow 
of his hand. Then, — 


SCOTCH WELCOME 


25 


“There’s a gentleman on the telephone,” he 
said. “He seems anxious like — ” 

“It’s Daddy,” Buddie interrupted. 

Before Buddie could add to his reply, Mr. Graeme 
had spoken. Buddie wondered that the man ad- 
dressed did not sink down and vanish through the 
floor, before the rebuke in his master’s voice. 

“Jones, I thought I made you understand that 
you were to telephone at once to Dr. Angell.” 

But Jones, after the literal custom of his tribe, 
made answer, — 

“So I did, sir; but the line was busy.” 

His words, though, fell on unheeding ears. Wrath- 
ful, apologetic, above all pitiful for the alarm his 
servant’s carelessness had caused another father, 
Mr. Graeme had risen from the table and started for 
the telephone. 


CHAPTER THREE 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 

n^EXT morning early, shipwrecks and misfit Lon- 
don clothes and liveried footmen alike forgot- 
ten, two sleepy boys were struggling to pull them- 
selves out of bed in season to be on time at 
school. 

Tom, as might have been expected, was the first 
one really to rouse himself and wriggle out of bed. 
For him, the school was a new one; and curiosity, 
aided and abetted by no small amount of dread : 
these are powerful assistants to an alarm clock or, 
in this case, to the warning knuckles of Miss Myles. 
Reluctantly, then, he rolled himself out from be- 
tween the blankets and padded across his floor to 
the open doorway which led to Buddie’s room. 
Buddie, nuzzled down among the bed-clothes, with 
Ebenezer stretched out across his own scarlet blanket 
at his feet, Buddie was the picture of placid comfort. 
It seemed rather brutal to disturb him. None the 
less, Tom did it. 

“Wake up, you lazy duffer ! ” he said, as he padded 
across the intervening stretch of floor and sat him- 
self down at Buddie’s elbow. “Miss Myles has 
knocked, an age ago.” 

“Let her knock!” Buddie responded, with sleepy 
indistinctness. “She’s done it, plenty of times be- 
fore.” 


26 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 


n 


Ebenezer evidently agreed with his young master. 
At Buddie’s voice, he had opened his eyes and lifted 
up his great gray muzzle for a minute. Then he had 
dropped back again, folded his shaggy front paws 
before his sleepy face, straightened down his hind 
legs to a more comfortable line, and given utterance 
to a remonstrant sigh that was more than half a 
snore. 

Tom gazed on him disdainfully. He never had 
quite recovered from the memory of his first night in 
the society of Ebenezer, in the society and, what was 
more, in the same bed with him and Buddie. 

“Get up, Ebenezer!” he ordered. “Down, you 
lummox I” 

Tom was wiser than he knew. One word to 
Ebenezer had more effect in waking Buddie than a 
round dozen words addressed to Buddie’s self. 

“Let him alone. Chub ! Can’t you see he’s com- 
fortable ? It’s mean to disturb him.” 

“Comfortable! So might you be comfortable, 
if you fell sound asleep with your head on the soup 
tureen. That’s no sign, though, that you had any 
business to keep it there. Get down, Ebenezer.” 

Buddie hitched himself down in the bed, and 
stroked the gray head caressingly. 

“Poor old man! Does he disturb you? It’s a 
shame. Why can’t you let him alone. Chub?” 

Chubbie felt harassed in his mind. There had 
been unfamiliar indigestibles for luncheon, the day 
before, and he had eaten more than was good for 
him. Besides, there was the strange school ahead 
of him, with all its ranks and files of stranger boys. 
True to his kind, Tom left the unknown teachers out 


28 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


of his calculations utterly. Teachers were teachers, 
and a good deal alike. But, meanwhile, there was 
Ebenezer, stretched out in luxury such as no sheep 
dog before him had ever known. 

“It’s no place for a dog, Buddie. I don’t see how 
Miss Myles ever stands it,” he said, and his accent 
was disgustingly superior, or so it seemed to Buddie. 

“She doesn’t; she sits it,” Buddie retorted. “If 
she didn’t, I can tell you, out she’d go in a hurry. 
Daddy didn’t buy me Ebenezer to have him abused. 
He appreciates a good soft bed as much as you do.” 

Buddie’s words were mild. His voice, though, 
was not at its gentlest. Tom was a guest, and there- 
fore privileged; still, that was no reason he should 
take it out on Ebenezer. Besides, the truth was 
that Tom was Daddy’s guest, not of Buddie’s choos- 
ing. Tom was well enough ; but, to Buddie’s mind, 
his recommendations stopped just there. And any- 
body knows that the mere being well enough is not 
sufficient reason for being chums, all winter long. 

Buddie’s feelings overcame him, at this point. 
He had an ardent longing to kick Tom off the edge 
of the bed, to put him out of the room, and to lock 
the door behind. Who had asked him to come and 
get into bed, at five o’clock in the morning, and sit 
there and abuse Ebenezer And he and Daddy, 
just by their two selves, used to have such good 
times ! And now this — 

With a sudden fiap, Buddie turned himself end- 
wise in the bed, and buried his face in Ebenezer’s 
hairy shoulder. Ebenezer roused himself to put one 
little, dabbing kiss on Buddie’s cheek, to fiing one 
burly, hairy paw across his master’s neck. Then 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 


29 


the two chums lay still, and thought about each 
other. 

Chubbie surveyed them with absolute disdain. 
Before he could speak out his feelings, though, a 
fresh tapping came upon the panels of the door. 

“ Boys ! ” The speaker evidently prided herself on 
being persuasive and yet firm. “It is almost eight. 
Breakfast will be ready in — ” 

“Yes’m,” Buddie responded placidly, and with- 
out stirring. “So'll we.” 

However, Buddie forebore to say when. 

The hours of a doctor’s household are bound to be 
more or less elastic, especially when that household 
is made up of the doctor and two boys. On this 
particular morning, though. Daddy shook his head, 
when his irrepressible young son came strolling to the 
table. 

“Five minutes before time you should be start- 
ing, Buddie,” he said warningly. 

Buddie buttered his toast with a flourish and 
scrape that littered the cloth with crumbs. 

“That’s all right. Daddy. We can eat lots of 
breakfast, in five minutes.” 

The doctor shook his head. 

“No bolting, Buddie ! I’ll fine you, if you do 
that.” 

Buddie looked alarmed. He knew his father’s 
varying tones, knew far too well the result of fines 
upon his pocket money. Indeed, once on a time, 
one awful week of rioting in his pet sins had wiped 
away the whole of his allowance and driven him to 
the ignominy of borrowing from Miss Myles. Buddie 
never had repeated the experiment. He got the 


30 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


money; but he also got a half -hour explanation of 
the dangers lurking in extravagance. Miss Myles 
knew good beef and puddings, when she saw them ; 
but she was as bad as a road-roller, when it came to 
laying down the law. She puffed and groaned and 
smoked most disagreeably ; and, what was far, far 
worse, she flattened out everything in sight. Daddy 
was different. He gave reasons. 

If Daddy had been a father of the most modern 
species, Buddie would have been sent to a large 
boarding school. But Daddy, while he realized all 
the arguments in favour of such places, yet had an 
argument or two on his own side. There were a 
few good schools for boys inside the limits of Man- 
hattan Island, schools where it was possible for 
Buddie to learn to know Greek and Algebra and 
football and the point of view of healthy, well-bred 
boyhood just as thoroughly as in those other and 
more famous centres of boy life. As to making 
friends who would smooth his path through college, 
the doctor never gave that phase of things a second 
thought. He knew Buddie too well to worry on 
that score. 

On the other hand. Dr. Angell knew, or thought he 
knew, that the right kind of a father might be the 
healthiest, the most helpful chum a boy could have ; 
and, kneeling beside the still figure of his girl wife, 
years on years before, the doctor had taken it as his 
privilege and task to make himself a father of that 
kind. To find out whether he had succeeded, it was 
only needful to ask Buddie. 

He had chosen Buddie’s school with care. About 
one hundred boys, masters who knew their chances 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 


31 


and made the most of them, a public opinion that 
put books on a level with sports, and a tradition for 
fair play and no cheating : these he had regarded as 
essentials. For the rest, he counted the airiness of 
the rooms, the size of the fields for hockey and foot- 
ball and lacrosse, as being infinitely more important 
than the length and weightiness of the names on the 
list of sponsors of the school. But that was Daddy. 

The school was well up-town. The athletic grounds 
were still farther up, away out in the Bronx. They 
rolled and sprawled all up and down a range of little 
hillocks, a gridiron there, a diamond here, tennis 
courts and a field for hockey somewhere else. To 
the boys* eyes, everything looked very simple. They 
did not know the thought and care, the journey ings 
to Harrow, the hours at Rugby, the consultations 
with all sorts of men from head masters to pro- 
fessional athletes, which had gone into the making 
of the place. Nevertheless, it was with no small 
degree of satisfaction that, lessons over, that same 
afternoon, Buddie, followed by a dozen of his cronies, 
came strolling out across the grass and halted to 
wait for Tom who was bringing up the rear. 

“Great old place. Chub !’* he said affably. 

Tom nodded. In his secret heart, he was amazed 
and a good deal delighted by what he saw. However, 
he was by no means sure that it would be well for 
Buddie to become acquainted with the fact. All 
that morning, Buddie had been disagreeably smug. 
He was not the only fellow in the school ; he did not 
own the place. Besides, Tom’s own school had been 
a real, true boarding school, not a place like this 
where most people just came for luncheon, and went 


32 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


home, nights. Still, these were fine, husky-looking 
fellows, and their old playground had been nothing 
but a suburban back yard. Besides, he had heard 
rumours of a game with Lawrenceville, later in the 
season. He uncoupled his train of thought abruptly, 
and fell to wondering if anybody would have the 
sense to discover that wiriness and speed counted as 
much as weight. 

During the mid-morning recreation hour, Buddie 
had sat enthroned among his mates as king. As a 
matter of course, all the old boys were exchanging 
their experiences of the summer. Buddie held his 
peace and awaited his turn until the very end, 
secure in the knowledge that his details outdistanced 
all the rest. Why not ? Had he not started out by 
way of a railway wreck — remembering Madge’s 
inconvenient questions of the day before, he now 
approached his climax cannily — and thence passed 
onward into a summer filled with every sort of 
thriller that a boy could wish, thrillers, indeed, far 
more exciting to look back on and to talk about 
than to meet along the tranquil path of every day. 
But Buddie omitted the tranquil parts completely. 
His narrative bristled with wrecking trains and 
shrieks and wolves and Indians and terrifying es- 
capes by torrent and mountain and by fog. 

Not that Buddie fibbed. The elements were all 
there in his experience ; it was merely that he com- 
bined them picturesquely, as one who knew the tastes 
of his audience. And the audience appreciated his 
skill. There was only one exception, a boy whose 
arm was still in a sling, by reason of a motor accident. 
Once he tried to interrupt and reassert himself ; but 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 


33 


Buddie took it out of him, for Buddie had been 
thrifty and had reserved his best for his last. Beside 
the wreck and rescue of the day before, a mere motor 
accident sank to its proper humdrum level of every- 
day routine. 

Buddie told this final story well. It had been 
dramatic in itself ; it was still fresh enough in his 
mind to lend itself to vividness. From start almost 
to the very finish, Buddie held his audience spell- 
bound and agape. Schoolboys in the earlier ’teens 
are not, as a rule, ardent readers of the daily papers, 
and the wrecking of a small excursion boat was not 
a matter of great enough importance to be handed 
on by word of mouth. On this account, Buddie 
had the story to himself ; he told it with detail and 
without much interruption, until the rescue had pro- 
gressed as far as the hot baths and the rubbings. 
Then Buddie’s tongue slowed down a little. 

While Buddie had been speaking, one of the new 
boys had edged his way well towards the middle 
of the group. The other boys had taken silent note 
of his lack of manners, had resolved to remind him 
of his lack, once a little of the freshness of the in- 
terest of Buddie’s tale had worn away. New boys 
could not do things like that ; at least, not new boys 
only half through their first morning in the school. 
While Buddie still was telling his adventure, one or 
two of his mates had lifted their brows and ex- 
changed glances behind the unconscious back of the 
new boy. Their signals of disapproval multiplied 
fast, moreover, when the new boy broke in on Bud- 
die’s pause with the fiattest sort of a question. 

“And what then ?” 


34 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


If Buddie floundered before the sudden question, 
it was neither from the consciousness of anticlimax, 
nor from any memory of his undignified appearance 
at the finish. Rather, it was from absolute surprise. 

“ What then ? ” he echoed. “ How do you mean ? ” 

“Tell the rest of it, while you are about it,” the 
new boy challenged him, and, in that challenge, 
certain chances for his school life vanished for ever- 
more. 

“But there wasn’t any especial rest,” Buddie 
explained, with a disgusted consciousness that, for 
the second time in four and twenty hours, his choicest 
tale had fallen flat and lifeless at the end. 

But the new boy tried to bring it back to life. 

“Wasn’t there! I am Madge Graeme’s cousin, 
and I was over there, last night. She told me all 
about it, and what freaks you fellows looked, when 
you came marching downstairs dressed up in Uncle 
Gordon’s clothes.” 

There was a pause, absolute and very long. Boy 
manners sometimes can be trusted, after all, and 
Buddie was a Fact in the school. It was Buddie 
himself who spoke first, and after a splendid rally. 
For just one minute, it had looked as if the new boy 
would be carried away in a basket. Instead, — 

“Did we ? ” Buddie asked indifferently. “ I didn’t 
notice much ; I was too hungry. Come along, 
Theo. It’s time we were talking up the team.” 
And, arm in arm with his especial crony, he sauntered 
away and left the other old boys to deal with the 
offender according to their code. 

In the admiring eyes of his mates, Buddie had 
been a hero in his self-control. In his own eyes, he 


THE NEW BOY AT SCHOOL 


35 


was merely paying tit for tat. The score was all 
for him, however. Buddie was a magnate on the 
football field. The day before, at luncheon, Madge 
had told him about this very cousin, who, as it 
seemed, was no great favourite of hers, and she had 
explained to Buddie that the cousin considered him- 
self a man of mark in football. Buddie had listened, 
and stowed away the information, ready for later 
use. The use for it had come sooner than he had 
thought. 

Lessons, or the first day apology for them, went on 
till time for luncheon. At luncheon, the presence of 
a dozen masters kept the talk on dull and adult 
themes. Theo Bancroft and Buddie Angell, one 
on either side of the Englishman who taught them 
algebra, chafed in spirit, while their bodies feasted 
on cold roast lamb and warm rice pudding. Theo 
had landed from Europe, only the noon before; 
Buddie had spent his summer in the Rocky Moun- 
tains, playing with an Indian and learning to turn 
handsprings with a famous artist. Each of the boys 
had heard the other telling his own adventures to 
the general group. Each of them was perfectly 
certain that the best part of the story had been with- 
held to delight the other’s ears alone. It was a great 
bore, then, to sit and mince about their pudding, 
and say Yes, sir, and Of course, sir, when they were 
longing to gobble, and be off to a certain window 
seat they knew full well, and there, elbow gripping 
elbow, put each other through a raking fire of ques- 
tions. 

The chance came to them at last. The slowest 
boy in school put down his spoon upon his empty 


36 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


plate; the Head glanced up and down the room, 
nodded to the clergyman who taught the Latin 
classes, and they rose. The boys rose after them, 
halted with lowered eyes until the Head said Duly 
thankful, then curbed their impatience for the end- 
less moments that it took the Head and his associates 
to get outside the room. It would be unwise to 
dwell upon the orderliness of their exit, afterwards. 

Up in their usual window seat, now grown a little 
tighter than it had been when they first discovered 
it and each other, just six months ago, Buddie and 
Theo lost no time in getting down to business. At 
first, they both asked questions steadily, and neither 
one of them made the slightest pretext of answering. 
By degrees, though, their interest calmed down to 
the point where they told each other things, talking 
both at once and paying not the slightest heed to 
what the other one was saying. The listening was a 
minor matter, and could be attended to, if need be, 
later on. It was the relief of telling things that 
counted. 

In the end, Theo was silent first. He had seen 
Europe at his older sister’s elbow, and older sisters, 
as a general thing, do not have the kind of adven- 
tures that make good telling. And Buddie, far too 
fond of Theo to let him feel the inferiority of his 
record, promptly changed the subject and talked 
about the season’s promise for athletics. Theo 
listened, agreed. Then he put a question. 

“What about the new boys?” he asked. “Any 
stuff in them ?” 

Buddie shut his. mouth for just a minute. Then, — 

“I think we’ll let them wait a while,” he answered. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 

T hat afternoon, Buddie questioned the wisdom 
of his decision. 

It was almost four o’clock, by the time the boys 
came straggling out across the recreation field. 
Luncheon over and the short noon rest hour, there 
had been another hour of lessons, before the boys 
were free. Then, by common consent, they had 
started for the Field, and the Englishman and the 
fat little Latin clergyman had started with them. 
The Englishman had been a giant at “footer” in 
his public school and day ; his coaching was a thing 
to be demanded on one’s knees. As for the little 
clergyman, the boys usually refused to go anywhere 
without him. They even adored him to the point 
of taking his brief preachments in good part, sure 
that some droll comment or some capital story 
would be driving home the point of even the sharpest 
and most merited of rebukes. The Head might 
have been the disciplinarian of the school; it was 
Father Gibson, as the boys all dubbed him, who 
gave the school its traditions and its tone. 

To-day, Theo and Buddie had seized upon him 
at the start; moreover, they had maintained their 
hold until the Field was in sight. There was much 
to be talked over. Father Gibson had been in 
college with America’s greatest coach. He knew 
37 


38 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


his book of rules almost as well as he knew his ser- 
vice book for chapel. He was able to tell at a 
glance the fitness of a new boy for any sort of a 
position, whether as quarter back, right field, or 
second alto in the choir. He never failed to answer 
a direct question, and he never, never gave advice, 
unasked. In that last never lay his hold upon the 
school. 

As a natural thing, the first of the talk, that 
afternoon, turned upon the sporting record of the 
year before. In any well-regulated school, there 
is only one important subject, during the opening 
days and weeks of the year; and it is impossible 
to approach that subject worthily, save through 
a review lesson as regards the past. How else 
strengthen the good and discard the bad ? Team 
play is about the same thing, the world over and in 
every circumstance ; experience in the past and care 
in the present : these are the only tools for working 
its betterment. Besides, this year two new schools 
had sent in challenges. 

Father Gibson never advised ousting a man from 
the team, no matter how bad might have been his 
play. Summary measures of that sort he left to 
the boys, sure that they would act when it was 
wise, and sometimes when it was not. For himself, 
he always urged the creed that it was never too 
late for even the most unlikely boy to make good; 
that there was better chance of success from a slug- 
gish player, broken to the traditions of the team, 
than from a raw recruit, however zealous. It was 
too bad for that better chance to be lost to the team 
and school, for lack of just a little patience. Of 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 


39 


the loss to the boy himself, however, Father Gibson 
prudently said no word. 

Halfway to the Field, Buddie and Theo had 
reached a spot in their discussion where they deemed 
it safe to stop and count up on their fingers. 

“Us two,” Buddie began, regardless of the man- 
ners dictated by lack of self-esteem; “and the two 
Markhams, and Baker, and Garry, and Robie : 
that’s only seven.” 

“And Canfield.?” the little clergyman suggested. 

Buddie shook a disapproving head. 

“No; not!” he said. “Sorry, Father; but it 
can’t be did.” 

“Why?” 

“Why not, you mean,” Buddie corrected shrewdly. 
“Honest, it’s no go.” 

“Why not, then, if you are so set on putting it 
that way ? ” 

Buddie eyed Theo across the clerical waistcoat. 
Theo also shook a disapproving head. Then he 
came to Buddie’s support. 

“Remember his tackling, last year ?” 

“Yes?” The word held its note of question. 

“Greased pigs were nothing to the way the fel- 
lows got away from him,” Buddie said gloomily. 
“Honest, Father Gibson, you don’t think he’d be 
any good ?” 

“What have you, that is any better ?” 

“There’s always stuff in the new fellows,” Buddie 
answered him hopefully. 

“Ye-es, if you can get it to the surface, in season 
to have it be much help.” 

Theo laughed. 


40 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Not fair, Father ! That’s your old game, and 
it won’t work, this year. You tried it on us with 
McGillivray, and you lost out.” 

The clerical waistcoat shook with mirth. 

“I lost out, you sinner! I didn’t lose; it was 
your fault for not coaching him properly. All 
through the fall, you took him on trust, because 
I had recommended him; naturally, when it came 
to the scratch, he failed you. It was a smashing 
failure, too, cost you two important games, and 
serve you right. I told you he was good material ; 
I didn’t tell you he was a finished product. What’s 
your team for, anyway ?” 

“To get games,” Buddie responded. “That’s 
easy. Give us another, if you want to try our 
wits.” 

The jolly little master shook his head. 

“No need. You’ve gone down on that one, 
Buddie. You aren’t the ’Varsity, yet awhile. Your 
team here is as much to make your men worth 
using as it is to use them. By the time you’re 
playing in the Stadium, it will be another story. 
Now, about Canfield?” 

“Well?” It was Theo who spoke, and slowly. 

“I’d keep him.” 

But Buddie cut in, enthusiastically as one does 
who is smitten with a new idea. 

“Tell you what. Father Gibson, we’ll strike a 
bargain with you. We’ll keep Canfield and shift 
him along to somewhere else, if you’ll give us your 
blessing when we put out Lucas.” 

“I thought Lucas could play.” 

Buddie’s answer was crushing. 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 


41 


“So he can ; but it’s not my sort of game.” 

The little master was shrewd; he knew enough 
to be aware when boyish patience and endurance 
have reached their limits. He changed the subject. 

“The new boys ought to work out into giving 
you a man or two,” he said. 

“Any especial ones?” Buddie queried. 

“I’ve not had too much time to look them over, 
Buddie. What about young Neal?” 

Buddie closed his teeth and drew down the corners 
of his lips. The grimace was more expressive than 
becoming. 

“Sloppy !” he gave terse reply, and the reply, 
however honestly intended, was not quite fair. 

“Where did you get him, anyhow, Buddie?” 
Theo cut in suddenly. 

“Daddy got him. He’s going to spend the winter 
at our house.” 

“So he said. What is he? Cousin?” 

“No relation. That is, his uncle, after he got 
rather old, married my Aunt Julia. That doesn’t 
count, though; not the way it would, if we’d been 
babies. Then, we could have been getting used 
to each other, right along; but they weren’t en- 
gaged till almost last Christmas.” Buddie paused 
to chuckle. “Ebenezer did it, caught him by the 
hem of his garment and hung on to him till Aunt 
Julia got there.” 

Father Gibson looked interested. 

“Ebenezer seems great on trapping people,” he 
said. 

“That’s the only time,” Buddie defended his pet. 

“What about the Bishop ?” 


42 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Buddie roared. Once on a time, Aunt Julia had 
entertained a Bishop, bent on confirmation. The 
confirmation service had come and likewise had 
nearly gone, without the appearing of the Bishop. 
Ebenezer had seen to that. He was not going to 
have unknown and gaitered clerics wandering alone 
about the house which he had taken as his own 
especial charge. 

“How did you know?” 

“The Bishop told me, next day. He is an old 
friend of mine.” 

Buddie appeared to be a little bit uneasy. 

“Was he very mad ?” 

Father Gibson’s answer moved by the shortest cut. 

“He was at our closing, in June, to hear your 
declamation.” 

Buddie’s face grew rosy red. 

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said hastily. “But 
Theo wanted to know about Chub. He’s my 
father’s half-sister’s husband’s nephew, and I never 
saw him, till the night before we started West. 
We were together, all summer, out in camp. Then, 
all at once, something struck my father, struck 
him queer; and he invited Chub to come back 
with us, and spend the winter.” 

“Buddie, you sound — ” 

Buddie saved Father Gibson the trouble of finish- 
ing his phrase. 

“Well, I don’t.” 

“Why not?” 

Buddie tried to shrug his shoulders carelessly. 
In the end, though, his snub-nosed countenance 
grew grave. 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 


43 


“For a fact, I don’t know,” he admitted. 

“Is he — ” The little master hesitated. He 
knew it is never wise to suggest ideas; and, ten 
chances to one, any undesirable quality he put 
forth would be the wrong one. 

Buddie relieved his indecision. 

“He isn’t. That’s the trouble. If he had a 
good, whacking fault to his name, he’d be all right. 
He is too perfect to be quite wholesome. Father 
Gibson,” Buddie gazed up at the little clergyman 
with worried eyes; “he’s the sort that puts a piece 
of paper under his boots, when he lies down to 
read.” 

Father Gibson nodded. He had been a boy. 
He knew how Buddie felt. 

Theo was more outspoken. 

“You don’t like him, then ?” 

Buddie closed the discussion summarily. 

“Miss Myles does,” he said. “She calls him 
Boy, just Boy. If it had a my dearest hitched on 
to it, it couldn’t be much worse. And the final 
symptom is that he doesn’t arise and knock her 
down.” 

The little Latin teacher appeared to be following 
out a line of his own. 

“He has a good obstinate chin, Buddie, and his 
hands weren’t too clean, this afternoon. I think 
there may be a chance for him, even if he can beat 
you out on your subjunctives.” 

“That’s because he crammed them, all last even- 
ing,” Buddie objected. Then his conscience ap- 
peared to smite him, for he added, “Anyhow, he 
might be worse, and the winter can’t last always.” 


44 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


But Theo saw no use in wasting time in profitless 
discussion. He had not forcibly annexed Father 
Gibson, that afternoon, in order to talk of Chubbie 
Neal, especially not when, after a hasty glance at 
him, he had disdained the Chubbie utterly and 
addressed him as plain Tom. 

“What about the other new boys?” he queried. 
“Do you think that they will be any good ?” 

“It’s rather soon to tell. So far, I’ve only seen 
one of them who looked especially promising : 
that dark, red-cheeked boy in the corner of my 
room. Porter or some such name.” 

An instant later, the little master became aware 
that, behind his back, the two boys were exchang- 
ing looks of disapproval. 

“Know him?” he added, quite casually. 

Buddie suppressed a sneeze. Out of it, — 

“Mmm — er — no,” he said. 

Father Gibson glanced at him shrewdly. 

“No? I supposed you did. I heard him asking 
where you were, this morning.” 

Buddie’s sneeze seemed to demand a most unusual 
amount of smothering. At last, — 

“I saw his cousin, yesterday. She told me about 
him,” he answered. 

Father Gibson’s face never betrayed his interest 
by so much as the twitching of a muscle. 

“What a good chance for Porter !” he said cor- 
dially. “It makes such a difference, coming into 
a new school.” 

And it was not till afterwards that Buddie realized 
that Father Gibson had failed to specify just what 
it it was which made the difference. 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 


45 


Theo, after his habit, came directly to the point. 

“But what if we don’t want him ?” he inquired. 

“He looks as if he could play good football, 
Theo.” 

“Maybe he can.” 

“And we may need him rather badly.” 

Both the boys noted the we^ and digested it. 
Father Gibson did not use it too often. When 
he did, it had its purpose. Buddie began to be 
suspicious. Few things in the school escaped the 
knowledge of the little Latin teacher; this affair 
of the new boy had not been anything at all, only 
a hint that things might follow later. Moreover, 
Buddie would have chosen that Father Gibson 
should not become aware of them till they had 
followed. It was pleasanter, all in all, to get in 
ahead of Father Gibson than to oppose him. 
Theo, though, once more came directly to the point. 
He reached it at the same minute that the three 
of them reached the entrance to the Field. 

“It’s not the football. Father Gibson. He may be 
all right enough, so far as that goes. The fact of the 
matter is, we, none of us old boys, want him round.” 

“Why not?” This time. Father Gibson took 
care of his question. 

“He’s been cheeking Buddie.” Theo cast down 
the fact as heavily as if it had been a weighted 
bludgeon. 

To his surprise, no question followed. Instead, — 

“Bad manners, that,” the little master commented 
crisply. Then, lifting up his voice, he added, 
“This way, you fellows. Else, the sun will be in 
your eyes. Which of you has the ball ? ” 


46 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Tom had it, as it chanced, given to his keeping 
by one of the old boys who had other uses for his 
hands. 

“Punt it, Neal,” the Englishman ordered briefly. 
“We want to see what you can do.” 

Tom punted. By the tradition which is supposed 
to govern the actions of the new boy in the school, 
his punting should have been strong, swift and sure ; 
it should have brought from his reluctant, unbe- 
lieving mates an increasing storm of applause, 
until the air was ringing with their shouts. As 
a matter of fact, he fumbled the ball, held it half 
a second too long, then let it fall quite wrong end 
round, with the discouraging result that, slithering 
along his toe, it bounced off sidewise and went 
rolling away across the grass to end by bumping 
ingloriously against the Latin master’s legs. 

There was a swift interchange of glances. Then 
the Latin master picked up the ball and flung it 
back to Tom. 

“Try it again, Neal,” he said kindly. “Of course, 
it’s a bit hard of us to have asked a total stranger 
to lead off the game.” 

Tom, scarlet, shut his teeth and cast a stealthy 
glance across at Buddie who, equally scarlet, was 
doing his best to whistle and to act as if the whole 
affair were no concern of his. The sight was not 
reassuring to Tom’s nerves. It would not have 
been easy to say just what he expected Buddie to 
do about it ; but he certainly felt himself neglected 
and a little bit aggrieved. On some boys, the sense 
of neglect would have acted like a spur. It pricked 
Tom ; but the prick punctured his poise completely. 


AT THE FOOTBALL FIELD 


47 


He punted again. That is, the ball fell from his 
hands, and his toe came up to meet it. They 
barely grazed each other’s edges. That was all. 

As a matter of course. Porter covered himself 
with glory. Not that that fact at all increased 
his popularity. Indeed, such was the general 
loyalty to Buddie that a good share of the boys would 
have liked Porter to have followed Tom’s example 
and missed out utterly, if only as a punishment 
for his earlier sins. But Porter was not the sort. 
He never tried to do things in public, unless he was 
rather sure to do them well. Besides, shyness, 
such shyness as had overthrown Tom, was not in 
him. He punted brilliantly. Later, when the boys 
had lined up in two teams, he showed he knew what 
it was to tackle, and, tackling, to hold on. When the 
Englishman and the Latin master left the Field, 
Buddie was between them, and the three were in the 
midst of hot discussion. 

Theo overtook them at the gate. He looked glum. 

“It’s no use,” he reported. “I’ve been talking 
to the boys. Not one of them will stand for it, so 
what’s the use of trying ? ” 

Buddie thrust his red head forward, to glower at 
Theo around the person of the master who walked 
between them. 

“Don’t be an ass, Theo !” he ordered his friend. 
“The boys will stand for anything that suits the 
four of us, for the simple reason that they can’t get 
on without our backing. What if Porter did cheek 
me.^ It’s football we want to get out of him, not 
manners. You go back and tell them that Porter 
is to be on the team, or I’ll get after them, to-morrow 


48 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


morning, and biff them till they don’t know whether 
they’re standing on their heads or on their heels. 
Now go !” 

That was one phase of Buddie. Another came, 
an instant later, came with a chuckle. 

“Oh, Theo, if you do see Chub, tell him that Miss 
Myles will be on hand to coach him up a little, after 
dinner. Yes, Father Gibson ? You were going to 
say?” 


CHAPTER FIVE 


Buddie’s electric concert 

I T was only thirty minutes before the beginning of 
Dr. Angell’s office hour, and already his waiting- 
room was lined with visitors. Nevertheless, Miss 
Myles rapped with decision upon his office door. She 
knew her rights in the house, as well as she knew her 
duties; she took them both with equal seriousness. 
Not that Miss Myles ever took anything very 
jovially, excepting her own weighty jokes which 
she offered up in the dining-room, whenever the 
meals went bad. Of course, she did not joke about 
their badness; her wit was merely meant to dis- 
tract Buddie’s mind from thinking too much about 
his loss. 

Miss Myles was young for her position in the 
doctor’s house. One look at her, though, drove 
away any doubts about the propriety of her being 
there. Her youth was merely a matter of sub- 
tracted dates. In spirit, she was older than the 
River Nile, and just about as poky, just about as 
impossible to delay, or to change from its normal 
course. Like the River Nile, she overflowed her 
banks a little now and then ; but, after one experience. 
Dr. Angell had decided it was best to flee before her 
and let her have her way. She would have had it, 
though, in any case. That was Miss Myles. 

“Come in !” the doctor said. 

49 


50 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Miss Myles opened the door and stood upon the 
threshold, blond, fat, Dutchy, with pale eyes and 
piles on piles of straw-coloured hair. She was clothed 
in respectable black garments, and, taken all in all, 
she was just about as skittish as a four-post bed. 
Beside her. Dr. Angell looked a care-free boy, not- 
withstanding the row of people waiting for him in the 
outer room. 

“Yes, Miss Myles he queried, from above his 
desk. 

“Am I interrupting. Dr. Angell?” Miss Myles 
queried back again sedately. 

“Not at all. Not at all.” The doctor had 
learned to know Miss Myles. This was the order 
of the day, as she had laid it down. Therefore he 
kept to it religiously. “Will you sit down?” 

Then the doctor had a surprise. Miss Myles 
departed from the order of the day, and put herself 
down on the edge of the chair placed in readiness for 
the long procession of patients. 

“Thank you,” she said. “I wanted to speak to 
you about — ” 

The doctor lifted his brows. 

“Buddie, or the butcher?” he questioned calmly. 
Miss Myles always was wanting to speak to him 
about things. As a rule, though, she did it, standing. 

Miss Myles allowed herself to be diverted from her 
central subject. 

“You noticed the chops, then?” she asked, and 
her face looked anxious. 

The doctor nodded. The chops had been the last 
things in his mind. Now she spoke of it, however, 
he remembered that they had been rather bad. 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 51 


“They would have made good boot-laces,” he 
said jovially. It seemed to him unmanly to be dis- 
cussing chops and things of that sort with Miss Myles. 

Miss Myles, though, saw no reason against keep- 
ing up the subject to the end. 

“I told the butcher, last week, that he must give 
us better service, and he promised me faithfully 
that he would attend to it. We had better meats for 
a few days. These chops were hard and stringy, 
as you say — ” 

The doctor, leaning back in his chair, was trying 
to think how he could switch off the motors of her 
speech. At her last words, he looked up sharply, 
although his voice lost none of its genial accent as he 
interrupted, with a strong emphasis on the pro- 
noun, — 

“I didn’t say. Miss Myles. That is what you are 
here to do.” 

Miss Myles’s motors went on working, without 
a pause. 

“ — and I shall tell him that he can send in his bill, 
and I shall buy of Smith. It is best to change about, 
from time to time. Otherwise, they get careless — ” 

The doctor was hitching about uneasily in his 
chair. The morning mail had brought him out his 
Lancet Its leading article was on the thing it called 
Poliomyelitis, and there had been just time to run 
it through before the office hour. It seemed a waste 
of good time to be kept talking about Smith and his 
silly chops. 

“That is for you to say. Miss Myles,” he assured 
her, his fingers on his fob. 

“ — and send us poor cuts, because they are so 


52 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


sure, whatever comes, that we are bound to keep on 
with — ” 

This time, the doctor’s fingers shut upon his 
watch, drew it out and looked searchingly into its 
face, as if he meant to discover, once for all, its 
symptoms. 

“Precisely,” he assented, and now his voice 
sounded crisp and professional. “Of course. Miss 
Myles, you will do whatever you think best ; only be 
sure that you give the man fair notice. Did you 
wish to speak of anything else ?” 

The watch was still in the doctor’s fingers. Miss 
Myles, seeing it, knowing the doctor, drew her own 
conclusions and came to the point as directly as it 
was possible for her to do. 

“Of course, I know I ought not to take your time, 
when you are busy — ” 

The doctor glanced at his Lancet with longing 
eyes. Then, — 

“Go on,” he bade her. 

“ — but there are one or two little things I’d like 
to speak to you about, and — ” 

“Buddie?” the doctor queried. 

“ — this is about the only time in the day when I 
can see you, apart from the boys.” Miss Myles came 
to a halt so unexpectedly that the doctor gasped. 

Then, — 

“Buddie?” he asked again. 

“I especially wished to say a word to you about 
Thomas.” 

“Chubbie ?” The doctor looked up at her in sur- 
prise. “What has he been doing ?” 

“I have reason to think,” Miss Myles never ex- 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 53 


pressed herself extravagantly; “that Thomas sleeps 
with his windows closed — ” 

“Dirty little sinner ! ” the doctor commented 
genially. “I’ll have him out of that in a hurry. 
Glad you told me. Miss Myles.” 

“ — and he reads in bed, mornings, when he ought 
to be getting up.” Miss Myles completed her case 
against Chubbie, and once more came to a halt. 

The doctor laughed. 

“What healthy youngster doesn’t ?” 

“I think Buddie — ” 

“He doesn’t wake up in season. That’s the only 
reason.” 

Miss Myles shut her lips. Folded them is the 
more conventional term for the way she did it. 
Then she unfolded them. 

“I wonder if you know that Buddie is thinking a 
good deal about electricity,” she said. 

“That’s good. I hoped he’d come to it, before 
long.” 

“But what about the meter. Dr. Angell ?” 

“ The ? ” The doctor’s fingers were shutting on his 
Lancet now. 

“The meter. Buddie is connecting all sorts of 
small — er — machines to the sockets. He is using 
a great deal of electricity.” 

“He’s got to use a great deal of something,” the 
doctor assured her. “That is the boy of him. Else, 
he’d put on wings and a halo, and we should see the 
last of him.” 

“But automobiles on the dining-room floor?” 
Miss Myles urged. “And the wheels scratch very 
badly.” 


54 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Hang the scratches ! They are healthy. Let 
the boy alone. Electricity is cheaper than some 
other forms of mischief. I’d rather he ran an electric 
laundry on the front stairs than slept with his win- 
dow only halfway open. I must get after Chubbie 
at once. That all, Miss Myles ? ” 

She took the hint, and rose. 

“Then Buddie is to be allowed — ” 

“Quite!” the doctor said decidedly, and in his 
relief at the prospect of Miss Myles’s departure, he 
utterly ignored the exceeding amount of liberty that 
he was placing in his young son’s hands. 

And Buddie was inventive. There was no mis- 
taking that. Furthermore, Miss Myles was literal, 
when it came to a case of carrying out the doctor’s 
orders. 

It was a full three days later, and a peaceful Sunday 
noon, when the doctor had his hospital staff luncheon. 
All autumn, the doctor had been waiting for a suffi- 
ciently healthy time to allow as many of his associates 
as possible to be able to come off duty at the same 
hour. This luncheon had been an annual affair. 
The younger men looked forward to it eagerly ; the 
two or three oldish men among the guests had learned 
to think of it with an affection born of plenteous 
feasting and of uncommonly good talk. 

As for^^Buddie, he loathed it utterly, for it was the 
one time in the year when he was given to under- 
stand that no welcome would await him in the dining- 
room. However, in his present crowd of other in- 
terests, Buddie had forgotten utterly the coming 
festival. He looked up sharply, then, when his 
father’s latchkey clicked in the lock above his head. 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 55 


Even on Sundays, it was not by any means the doc- 
tor’s custom to come home from his rounds at such 
an early hour. 

“Hullo, Daddy ! ” 

“Hullo, son ! Where are you 

“Here.” Buddie’s voice was muffled by the base- 
board, not three inches from his nose. 

“What are you doing ?” 

“That’s telling.” Not that Buddie meant to be 
saucy, though. 

“Not in mischief?” The doctor was shaking 
himself out of his motor coat. 

“’Course not.” 

“Then what are you doing, down on all fours in 
that dark corner?” Daddy tossed his cap on the 
table, and turned to peer down at his son. 

His son promptly rolled over, and sat himself 
upon the object of his labours, whatever they might 
be. Then he smiled up at his father blandly. 

“Just looking to see whether Miss Myles keeps 
the corners clean,” he said. 

The doctor laughed ; but, — 

“None of that, Buddie !” he warned his son, for 
he knew the limits of Miss Myles’s liking for chaff, 
knew the unlimited scope of Buddie’s appetite for 
chaffing. All in all, he would have preferred a 
housekeeper who could hold her own. Lacking that, 
he himself did his best to maintain a proper balance. 
“You’re not playing any tricks on Miss Myles, 
Buddie ? ” he asked directly. 

“Honest, no. I wouldn’t.” And Buddie’s eyes 
gave silent testimony to his truth. “No; please, 
please don’t go to speering round. Daddy. It’s all 


56 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


right, truly. I’m — I’m — Bother ! I wanted it to 
be a whole surprise, not half a one.” 

The doctor felt that some duty lay on him. Buddie 
was very crocky, very earnest, very pleading; and 
Buddie, even at his normal, was not always easy 
to withstand. 

“All right, son. I won’t look; I’ll take your 
word for it. I only was afraid you were trying tricks 
on Miss Myles.” 

Buddie’s reply was eloquent. 

“Her ! Not ! ” he answered tersely. 

The doctor went his way : to his room to groom 
himself ; to the dining-room to see Miss Myles ; to 
the butler’s pantry for a word with the men, and 
finally to the library to assure himself that every- 
thing there was ready for the lazy hour of smoking 
and good fellowship which ended up the function. 

Meanwhile, down in the hall, Buddie was very 
busy, very smutty, and increasingly triumphant. 
Every now and then, though, he was forced to pause 
in his work and dodge the opening of the door be- 
side him. At first, so absorbed was he in his mys- 
terious task, that he failed to remember exactly why 
so many men should be coming in to see his father 
just at noon. Then, as the bell buzzed in the far 
distance and the door swung open for the dozenth 
time, realization struck him. He sat back upon his 
heels and drew his arm across his brow. 

“So much the better !” he said to himself. “I’d 
forgotten the blamed old luncheon; but now I’ll 
hurry up and give them the time of their whole 
lives.” 

And he did. 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 57 


It meant laborious toil, though. Buddie had not 
intended his plan to be in readiness till night. 
Thought out in church, that morning, between the 
text and the And now, the plan had seemed to him 
ideal, the leading up magnificently from occupation 
for a dull Sunday afternoon to a fitting climax at the 
Sunday dinner. Tom, consulted, turned a deaf and 
chilling ear. It was Sunday, he pointed out to 
Buddie. Nice people did not work on Sunday; at 
least, not in town. In the country, it was different. 
And Tom had taken his disapproving self away, to 
lie at full length on his bed and read a tale about 
freebooting in the Spanish Main. 

Buddie had fired a few verbal shots at his de- 
parting back. Then, armed with shears and wires 
and various other tools of the electrician’s calling, 
he went down to the front hall and fell upon his 
knees behind the outside door. There Miss Myles 
discovered him and sought to argue; but, for the 
once, her argument was put to rout by the combined 
eloquence of Buddie, and her own memory of the 
orders laid upon her by the doctor. 

“Really, though,” she urged, in one last wave of 
remonstrance; “I know he would not approve of 
your ripping a whole seam in the carpet — ” 

“It’s a lot more work than it would have been to 
cut it.” Buddie drew his cuff across his nose and 
eyebrows, for even the most cleanly of carpets yields 
up dust beneath the seesaw jar of an attacking blade. 
‘‘ — and especially this afternoon, when — ” 
“Well?” The knife slipped a little. Buddie 
glowered at the gash. Then he glowered at Miss 
Myles. 


58 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Sunday, you know, dear boy,’’ she chid him 
gently. 

Buddie’s lashes swept his cheek. 

“Ye-aes,” he said obediently. Then he clasped 
his hands, knife and all, waiting mutely till she went 
away. 

Always the luncheon had been a most informal 
function ; but, this year, it was different. The 
reason was not far to seek. The year before, the 
luncheon had been omitted; the host had been 
buried in the Canadian mountains, winning his way 
back to health by means of a months-long banish- 
ment from all the things which had made his life 
worth while. The banishment had done its work. 
Not only had Dr. Angell come back to town, as 
strong and fit for service as ever ; but he had had the 
rare experience of not finding that his place had 
closed behind him. Rather, it was waiting for him, 
wider than ever. He had flung himself into it with 
more than his old enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which 
had fired his guests, to-day, with the determination 
to make the luncheon memorable. 

And so, after the feast had worked its way into its 
latter stages, the oldest guest made a sign to the 
servant at his side, then rose. The servant left the 
room, and came back again, bearing a rose-crowned 
loving cup between his hands. He set it down be- 
fore the standing guest, the senior surgeon of the 
staff, sixty, pompous as a camel and just about as 
bald. The senior surgeon lifted his hand, and the 
other guests arose. Then, turning to their host, the 
senior surgeon cleared his throat and began to speak. 

“Dr. Angell, this is in some respects the — ” 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 59 


There was a sudden click, and then a preliminary 
buzzing, as if something else, something mechanical, 
were likewise clearing its throat, preparatory to a 
speech upon its own account. Then the buzzing 
stopped, and the senior surgeon, recovering from his 
amazed disgust, resumed his phrase, — 

‘‘In some respects, the pleasantest moment that 
has ever come to me. It has come — ” 

And, sure enough, it had. 

Click ! 

Then, distant, to all seeming, yet strangely over- 
powering in its resonance, 

“ Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it. 
Everybody’s doing — ” 

Another click cut the words in two, and the rat- 
tling theme trailed off into a discordant blur of many 
sounds. 

The senior surgeon frowned. He was a sub- 
scriber to the opera, and an honorary and honoured 
director of the Philharmonic. As consequence, he 
regarded ragtime as profane, and so-called popular 
songs an insult to mankind. 

But the popular song had ceased ; the ragtime had 
slowed to the rhythm of a dirge, then ended in com- 
plete stillness. The senior surgeon waited, erect, 
his finger-tips resting on the table, until he thought 
he had made sure that the stillness was likely to be 
lasting. Then, with unshaken dignity, he made a 
fresh start. 

“Dr. Angell, at a time like this and at a table 
ringed with faces of your friends,” the senior surgeon 
paused an instant to let his audience gloat over his 


60 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


well-turned phrase; “it would be idle for me to 
stand here, wasting your time and patience — ” 
Click ! 

“ Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it. 
Everybody’s do — Brrrrrrrrrr — ip / ” 

And the abruptness of the silence left everybody 
gasping. 

One or two of the younger doctors laughed. The 
senior surgeon grew red and a little testy. Neverthe- 
less, he valiantly resumed, — 

“In words of praise which, at its most eloquent, 
can never half do justice to its theme. Dr. Angell, 
we, your guests, know you too well — ” 

Click ! 

Then silence. 

Everybody drew a long breath. 

“Too well to need any reminder of your influence 
upon the widening field of medical science. Who 
else has also done so much for the improved sanita- 
tion of our tenements ? Who else has fought so 
brave a fight for bettering our hospitals for poor 
children? Who else — ” 

This time, it came without so much as a prelimi- 
nary click. Hilarious, noisy, contradicting the head 
surgeon’s oratory in a jigging fashion which added 
its final touch of insolence, the song broke out again 
as if in answer to the speaker’s questions. 

“ Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it. 
Everybody’s doing — Brrrrrrrrrr — ip / 
Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it. 
Everybody’s do — Brrrrrrrrrrrrr — ip ! 
Everybody’s — ” 


BUDDIE’S ELECTRIC CONCERT 61 


And so on and on, in a ceaseless and hiccupping 
round. 

Out in the hall, bunched in a corner behind the 
outside door, Buddie, scarlet, dismayed, yet twisted 
into a tight knot of unholy mirth : Buddie was 
prodding at wires and jerking at a key. Behind 
him stood Miss Myles, stiff and taut with dignity. 

“Buddie,” she was ordering; “this improper 
noise must be stopped at once.” 

Scarlet though he was, and plainly anxious, 
Buddie yet faced about, with something very like 
a giggle. 

“How?” he demanded flatly. 

“By — ” Miss Myles floundered. She was no 
electrician; it was not for her to know the precise 
method by which Buddie, in a corner of the hall, was 
producing such fearful din inside the distant dining- 
room. Not that she had needed any telling, though, 
that Buddie was the one producing it. Who else 
could ? Or would ? None the less, she floundered. 

Daddy’s voice came to her rescue. In spite of the 
etiquette of the occasion, in spite of the silver loving 
cup which evidently was waiting its chances to be 
presented to him with all due ceremony : in spite of 
all this. Daddy had excused himself from his guests 
and, with unerring instinct, had gone straight to the 
place where he had last seen Buddie. 

“Buddie !” he said. 

At the one word, Buddie’s scarlet face turned 
purple, and his anxiety increased. Not all the 
anxiety in the world, though, could quite keep the 
chuckle from his voice, as he responded, — 

“Sorry, Daddy. Something has gone wrong with 


62 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


the motor, and I can’t turn off the thing, to save my 
life.” 

Nor could he. 

In the end, it took the youngest of the doctors to 
solve the problem of the loving cup. Taking ad- 
vantage of one of the slight pauses that followed each 
of the Brrrrrrrrr — ips, he hastily arose and shouted 
out the wise suggestion that the cup be left there on 
the table, and that the speech of presentation be for- 
warded to their host by the first mail, next morning. 


CHAPTER SIX 


BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 

l^jT OVEMBER at last had come, the dreary month 
'Ll that is neither real autumn nor real winter, 
the month that gets its only chance of interest out 
of Thanksgiving and football. 

For both the boys, October had been short and 
busy. Tom had had his own share of labour in 
fitting himself into his new school, and into the 
angles of Buddie’s prejudices. Not that Buddie 
meant to be dictatorial. It was merely that he had 
had fifteen years of being only child, and he found 
it hard to break down the walls of his customs, 
harder still to let anybody sit down, apparently for 
all time, on even the footstool of his throne. He 
tried his level best not to care, when Tom got in his 
way, and changed his plans, and asked questions 
concerning things he should have known out of his 
own common sense. It was not always too easy, 
though. Besides, there was Ebenezer to be con- 
sidered. Moreover, there was Miss Myles. 

Miss Myles was forming the habit of telling peo- 
ple that she had loved Tom at first sight. Buddie, 
watching her, judged that she had. Strangely 
enough, the fact caused him no stings of jealousy; 
he merely took it out on Tom, not so much in words 
as in an attitude of pitying wonder which Tom, 
though innocent of the cause, yet found exasperating 
63 


64 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


beyond measure. Miss Myles had her own little 
ways with boys, ways that she judged agreeable and 
stimulating to their later manhood. She liked to 
pause beside them, in the firelight, and rest one hand 
on their shoulders, and talk to them of Manliness, 
and the rewards that fall like rain around a rampant 
sense of Truth. Her facts were correct enough for 
anybody; her mistake was in taking it for granted 
that they would not stand the sunshine, and the 
accent that goes with sitting down a moment, duster 
in hand, upon the bottom stair to keep a fellow com- 
pany while he is putting on his rubbers. 

Buddie objected to her methods. They seemed 
to him as sweet and sticky as molasses. He did 
Tom the credit of believing that he was quite unable 
to escape them, though. Buddie’s memory was 
short. He had quite forgotten that, months before. 
Miss Myles had tried the same tactics upon him, 
and that he had escaped her, then and for all time. 
Moreover, he had done it without the aid of an ap- 
peal to Daddy, done it by simply showing out his 
healthy hatred of her sentimental dodderings. 

“She knows a fresh egg when she sees one, and 
she mends my stockings without making any lumps ; 
but I’ll be hanged if I’ll have her mooning round and 
talking sloppy talk, while I am trying to do my 
algebra,” he had confided to Theo upon one occasion ; 
and, what was more, he kept his word. 

With Tom, though, it was different. He had been 
an invalid mother’s only son and comrade and play- 
thing. When she had died, a year or two before his 
coming to the Angell home, she had left him with an 
acute longing for mothering of almost any sort. Of 


BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 


65 


course, being a boy, he preferred healthy, unsenti- 
mental mothering to the sort bestowed on him by 
Miss Myles. However, good underdone roast beef 
out of reach, one eats sweet cornstarch pudding with 
appetite, rather than starve entirely. At least, 
Tom did. But, as for Buddie, he would have cast the 
pudding to the dogs, not the pampered and critical 
Ebenezer, but just dogs, and gone out to hunt for beef. 

Still, all things considered, Buddie showed him- 
self surprisingly tolerant of Tom. Besides, there 
was his promise, hard won from him by his adored 
Aunt Julia, not alone to take Tom in, but, once he 
was there, to try to make him welcome. Buddie 
kept his promises. It was the first lesson he had 
learned, when he came out from babyhood, that and 
the proper brushing of his teeth. 

“Besides,” he said to Theo, one day when, up in 
Theo’s room, the two boys had been discussing Tom ; 
“all the time he is mooning around and letting Miss 
Myles patacake him, he’s out of my way.” 

“Does your father like him?” Theo queried 
bluntly. 

“Daddy isn’t saying much. It is my belief, 
though, that he is thinking things, thinking them 
hard. Tom is all right; he is a nice young lady. 
In time, I expect he’ll tie that top curl of his into a 
blue ribbon. But,” Buddie lapsed into a chuckle; 
“I say, Theo, just think of the example it’s bound to 
be for me.” 

Theo, seated in the window-seat, drew up his 
dangling legs, crossed them, and sat upon them, 
Turkwise. 

“What sort ?” he demanded. 


66 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“He reads the Proper Psalms, every single night 
at bedtime,” Buddie burst out disgustedly. 

“That won’t hurt him any,” Theo said, with 
tolerance. 

“Hh ! That depends on the way he reads them. 
There’s no harm in the psalms themselves; but 
there’s a whole lot of harm in the way he sits down 
in plain sight of the doorway, sits down neatly with 
both feet on the floor, and then tells me to please be 
quiet for a little time. If he’d say, ‘Shut up, you, 
till I get my psalms done,’ there would be some hope 
for him. And he always puts on a nice clean hanky 
for his dinner. Scent, too !” Buddie’s voice could 
not well have carried more disgust. 

Theo nodded. 

“It’s bad, Buddie. He sure is an awful ass.” 

“And,” Buddie swept on, now mastered utterly 
by the tide of his long-cherished, long-suppressed 
grievances; “he rules the lines around his algebra 
examples, not just draws them. Besides all that,” 
Buddie lowered his voice to a mere murmur, as one 
who chronicles disgraceful fact; “only the other 
day, I heard Daddy giving it to him in great shape, 
and what do you think it was for ?” 

“Give it up.” 

“Sleeping with his window shut.” 

“No !” Theo’s legs dropped from under him, and 
hung, swinging. “For a fact, Buddie? No won- 
der he’s such a fool at football.” 

Buddie caught at the digression. 

^“Honest, Theo, what do you think about Porter ?” 
he inquired. 

“Hmm.” Theo spoke with thoughtful gravity. 


BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 


67 


“He plays well enough to make up for some other 
things — almost.” 

“Yes,” Buddie assented. “Exactly that.” 

And then silence fell. 

From his first day, Porter had been one of the 
problems of the school. To the boys, at least. 
The Head, who saw him chiefly in his classes and at 
meals : the Head liked him. Porter was good-looking, 
uncommonly neat in his ways and quick to think 
and to answer the agreeable thing to any question 
put to him by those in authority. Moreover, his 
manners were never marred by any instants of self- 
distrust such as, every now and then, turned a large 
majority of the other boys into tongue-tied bumpkins. 

The English master, who saw Porter only at the 
Field, also liked him absolutely, for Porter entered 
into all the sports with a success that went far to 
atone for the slight swagger which marked his 
methods. The little clergyman, though, saw farther ; 
and, seeing, he had his doubts, doubts which he 
religiously kept from putting into words. It was so 
easy to spoil a boy’s chances for all time, just by 
speaking out a hasty bit of judgement. And Porter, 
product of too much home influence of a quite wrong 
sort, might end by making good under the milling 
process ground upon him by his mates. The year 
was young yet ; they would see. Meanwhile, 
asked leading questions by the boys. Father Gibson 
merely smiled and shook his head, declaring that he 
was a youngster of good promise, once it was taken 
out of him a little. What the it was. Father Gib- 
son did not specify. 

To the boys. Porter was a problem. None of 


68 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


them liked him ; but none of them felt it would be 
wise to ignore him. He was too useful to the school 
for that. For the sake of his football, his hockey 
and his long-distance running, they must put up with 
his calm assumption of a right to a leading place in 
their foregatherings and a leading voice in their 
discussions. They took him in ; however, they 
took him, not at his own self-valuation, but as a 
necessary evil, as a useful scourge. 

“Awful ! ” Buddie said briefly. “But we may get 
to where we can’t get on without him.” 

And to that position Buddie clung stoutly, not- 
withstanding Porter’s efforts to get on intimate 
terms with Ebenezer, notwithstanding Porter’s’ re- 
lationship to Madge Graeme. 

Strange to say, it had not been until the last week 
in October that Buddie and Madge had had their 
second meeting. The delay had been of Daddy’s 
making. Indeed, it was a social emergency which 
Daddy had found it hard to meet. Not that Daddy 
lacked gratitude. Even now, weeks later, he turned 
sick, every time he allowed himself to think what 
might have happened, had the Graeme launch been 
just a very little slower in coming alongside. Dr. 
Angell knew Mr. Graeme well by name and reputa- 
tion : a Scotch contractor who had made his fortune 
and then made himself, both very energetically and 
with no small success. Men spoke well of him, even 
men whose taste was for fewer servants and less 
gilding on the outsides of their books. The doctor 
himself would have been glad to meet him at any 
of the dozen clubs he carried on his list. But for 
Buddie ? 


BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 


69 


The doctor shook his head. Boys did like the 
gilding. He dragged a chair to his writing table, 
and turned over and tossed about the heaped-up 
papers, seeking his most resplendent stationery 
whereon to express his thanks. And there the matter 
had rested. 

Just once or twice, Buddie had talked a little about 
Madge, had told his father what a stunning girl she 
was, almost as fine a girl as the Teresa who had set 
Buddie’s standards once for all. He even hinted that 
he would like to see Madge again, had reminded his 
father that he had promised to go to see her, some 
day. Daddy, though, was wily. He had listened, 
and agreed ; then, as if by chance, he had gone off 
into a discussion of the work it was to get a team 
ready to make a decent showing by Thanksgiving. 
It really was a shame that there were not more after- 
noons a week. 

And then, one day in late October, Fate took a 
hand. 

It was Saturday, whole holiday, and, for obvious 
reasons, too long a time to be given wholly to foot- 
ball. Whatever the durability of one’s enthusiasms, 
one’s muscles are bound to tire in time. Still, it is 
not in boy nature to waste a perfectly good half day 
of freedom from books. Since football must be put 
off till the afternoon, it was necessary to think up 
something else, something outdoors, to fill the morn- 
ing. Tom was for straying down along the western 
water front, which charmed him utterly. Buddie 
declared himself in favour of a trip to Coney Island, 
Daddy, coming in on the discussion in its later 
and more heated stages, settled the matter in 


70 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


short order, by packing the both of them off to 
the Bronx. 

Chubbie never had been to the Bronx Zoo, nor 
did he care especially for animals. Buddie loved 
everything that went upon four feet, and he knew 
the geography of the various enclosures, inhabitants, 
chief products and all, a good deal better than he 
knew his map of the United States. What was more, 
as Daddy had discovered long before, it was impossi- 
ble to make a tour of the Zoo with Buddie, and fail 
to catch something of his enthusiasm. By the time 
they were tossing bits of sweetened bun into the 
bear pits, Tom was quite as eager as his comrade, 
though not one half as skilful. 

“Take it easy,” Buddie ordered him. “You 
aren’t pitching baseball ; you’re giving food to the 
hungry. Go slow, and fire straight, and they’ll 
make it, every time. That doesn’t mean, though, 
that they’re going to waltz all over the cage, picking 
up your fouls.” 

Tom tried again. But the bear, rising up on its 
hind legs and waving its fore paws in hungry antici- 
pation of the tidbit : this spoiled his aim completely. 
The bit of bun flew wide, and rolled away, unseen, 
to be buried in the dust that carpeted the pit. 

“Out ! ” Buddie said composedly. “Now you 
look here.” And his more practised aim sent the 
bun flying straight into the open, red-lined gullet. 

The bear gulped, winked, then opened his mouth 
for more. Buddie flung a second morsel down his 
throat, then stood aside for Tom. 

“Easy does it,” he advised. “There ! That’s 
bet — Oh, hang !” For the bear, now on all fours. 


BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 


71 


was disconsolately searching in the dust and scraps 
that littered the earth beneath his feet. 

“He’d a good deal better throw underhand, till 
he gets his aim a little surer,” a voice said from 
behind. “The bears grow awfully cross, if you 
make them miss too often.” 

It was a girl’s voice, and hence not one privileged 
to give advice in matters of marksmanship. Were 
not women ordered to silence, besides having their 
arms put on upside down ? Buddie turned to give 
the stranger a rebuking glance. What right had 
she to stand about, and watch her betters, and tell 
them how to do things concerning which she could 
have no first-hand knowledge ? Buddie puckered 
his snubnosed face into a scowl, by way of making 
his stare more full of rebuke. To his disgust, 
the stranger appeared to endure the rebuke un- 
flinchingly. 

“Really, it’s the easiest way to do it,” she persisted. 

“For a girl, maybe.” Buddie would not have 
been rude to save his life. He was only a little bit 
uncompromising. And, really and truly, the girl 
was very bold. 

Now her boldness took the form of a laugh. 
Buddie, clothed in scorn and in the weightiness of his 
dignity: Buddie was amusing, and she showed she 
realized it. Then, — 

“I wasn’t thinking so much about the girl as I was 
about the bears,” she retorted calmly. “It’s hours 
till feeding time, and they are hungry. Can’t you 
imagine how you’d feel, yourself, to see your luncheon 
coming, and then watch it getting lost, somewhere 
on the way ?” 


72 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


The logic of the thing appealed to Buddie; the 
appreciation of the animal point of view appealed to 
him still more. This girl would not belong to the 
vast majority of people, who only pretended to 
throw Ebenezer’s ball, and then laughed at him 
when he fell a victim to the hoax. He smoothed his 
scowl, and turned to look at her more closely. She 
was a pretty girl, brown-eyed and freckled. Her 
hair, as far as he could see it under her brown hat, 
glinted with reddish lights. All in all, he liked her. 
What was more, he was dimly aware that she re- 
minded him of somebody he had seen somewhere or 
other, not so very long ago. 

“Besides,’’ she was continuing, regardless of his 
half-pleased, half -puzzled scrutiny; “it’s foolish 
to be wasting all your bun.” 

“I say,” Buddie broke in abruptly; “I believe 
you’re Madge.” 

She nodded unconcernedly. 

“Yes. Who are you 

“I’m Buddie, you know; Buddie Angell.” 

She looked perplexed, inquiring. Then memory 
dawned, and, with it, recognition, pleasure. 

“What fun ! Who ever would have thought of 
meeting you here?” she exclaimed. 

“Why not?” Buddie asked her literally. 

“Oh, just — er — Where have you been, all this 
long time?” Her smile included Tom as well as 
Buddie. 

Tom smiled back again. Buddie answered 
tersely. 

“Home.” 

Her red-brown eyes swept him from head to heel. 



She reminded him of somebody he had seen 
somewhere or other. Page 72. 




BEFORE THE BEAR PITS 


73 


There was a laugh in them; but Buddie was only 
aware of the crushing accent in her words, — 

“Well, I can’t say I think your manners have im- 
proved.” 

For some unaccountable reason, Buddie felt 
testy. Perhaps — 

“What’s the matter with my manners?” he de- 
manded shortly. 

She ignored the present in the past. 

“Most men would have come to call on my 
mother,” she informed him airily. 

Her shot missed its mark. 

“ I don’t doubt it,” Buddie said. 

“Why didn’t you come, then ?” 

“Because I’m a boy.” Then Buddie, turning 
away, busied himself with the remnant of his bun 
and with the waiting bear. 

If he thought Madge would give up the subject 
and depart upon her way, he reckoned quite without 
his host. A red-brown head crowned with a mush- 
room of a hat thrust itself between his eyes and the 
expectant face of the bear. 

“You weren’t as cross as this, the other day,” 
the owner of the head reminded him. “What on 
earth’s the matter ? ” 

“Nothing.” 

“Are you mad about anything ?” 

“No.” 

“Are you bashful ?” 

Buddie turned scarlet. He recognized a ring of 
malice in the question. 

“No.” 

“Why haven’t you been to see me, then ?” 


74 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Buddie stuck his fists into his pockets and an- 
swered with composure, for now he felt it was 
his chance to score. 

“You never asked me.” 

This time, it was the girl’s turn to be testy. 

“I supposed you’d know enough to come, without 
asking.” 

Buddie continued to score. 

“Gentlemen don’t,” he told her ponderously. 

“Oh.” That was all she said, for a minute. 
Then, “Well, I’ll ask you now,” she added. 

“Will you?” Buddie queried pleasantly, for it 
delighted him to see the unmistakable spark of anger 
in her red-brown eyes. 

His query brought a train of sparks. 

“Yes,” she snapped. 

“All right.” Buddie turned away, as if discussion 
were at an end. 

“I am asking you,” she said impatiently. 

Buddie wheeled, came back again. 

“I didn’t hear you,” he told her. 

“Oh, I say, Buddie ! ” Tom intervened. 

And then Tom dodged, before the withering glance 
Madge cast upon him. 

“Thank you; but I can fight my own battles,” 
she said crushingly ; “and, what is more, I generally 
can win.” 

Then, before either boy could rally, she had 
packed herself into a car, drawn up beside the path- 
way just behind them. An instant later, she had 
gone whizzing out of sight. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 

J UST before luncheon, that same noon, the boys 
were giving Daddy a more or less distorted picture 
of the morning meeting, when a violent chugging in 
the street outside sent them dashing to the window. 
The very car of their noon adventure was turning 
to draw up before the house. It came to a standstill, 
and out of it stepped a footman so enormous that 
the note between his thumb and finger dwindled by 
comparison to the size of a postage stamp. 
Regardless of the testimony of his eyes, — 

“Well, I’ll be jiggered if it isn’t that Madge!” 
Buddie exclaimed. 

“Where But Tom’s query was not unnatural. 
“Not in the car, you duffer; but she sent it, all 
the same. I’d know that chauffeur in a thousand. 
Down, you sinner ! ” For Ebenezer, catching the 
infection of the general spirit of curiosity, had added 
his huge grizzled pate to the other two already 
peering out between the curtains. 

The curiosity came to a climax at the entrance of 
Miss Myles. 

“Give it ! ” Buddie ordered eagerly, as he recog- 
nized the note now in her hands. 

“Buddie !” The doctor’s voice was full of warn- 
ing. When he could help it, he allowed his son to 
take no liberties with Miss Myles; not that he 
75 


76 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


especially admired his housekeeper, but because 
Buddie easily could have made Miss Myles’s posi- 
tion in the house an impossibility. And Miss Myles, 
whatever her moral graces or her social charms, 
was a practical necessity to a busy man like Dr. 
Angell, wifeless and responsible for two hungry boys. 

Buddie recognized the accent and subsided; but 
he kept the corner of his eye upon the note. With 
exasperating deliberation. Miss Myles put it on the 
table at the doctor’s place. He glanced at it, smiled 
at the thicket of flourishes which garnished the ad- 
dress, and then tossed the note across to his waiting 
son. 

“It’s yours, Buddie.” 

Buddie plucked it open. Inside, it was pompous. 
Miss Madge Graeme begged the honour of the pres- 
ence of Mr. Angell on the evening of October 
the thirty-first, from eight till ten. Down in the 
corner, a footnote stated that Mr. Angell was urged 
to bring his friend, Mr. Neal. In the other corner, 
a huge R. S. V. P. betrayed the British origin of the 
Graeme family. 

Buddie spelled it out deliberately. 

“R. S. V. P. Hh! What’s that? Roast — 
Supper — V — Party. I’ll be hanged if I under- 
stand the F, though.” 

Tom had encountered the phrase in stories. In- 
deed, he liked that kind of thing. Duchesses and 
diamonds appealed to him, as electricity and elephant 
hunting appealed to Buddie. 

“It means you’ve got to answer,” he explained. 

Buddie dashed to the front window. 

“But they’ve gone.” 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 77 


“’Spose they have ?” Tom continued to be arro- 
gant. “You can write it; can’t you?” 

“Yes, I suppose so. I’ve got some jolly postcards 
in my room, the elevated trestle up where it hits the 
Harlem. I got ’em, six for five, the other day. They 
always come in handy.” 

It was almost too bad of Daddy to break in on 
Buddie’s pleasure in his own foresight. However, 
he felt bound to do so, in mercy to the feelings of the 
Graeme household. 

“Sorry, son; but I am afraid you’ll have to write 
a letter.” 

“What’s the good? A card is twice as easy.” 

“Manners,” Daddy suggested. Then he added, 
with a laugh, “You see, we have to do something 
as an offset to that magnificent footman.” 

“Oh, that !” And, to Daddy’s relief, his son’s tone 
was disdainful. Then Buddie added more alertly, 
“ Oh, I say, it’s for Hallowe’en ! Can I go. Daddy ? ” 

“You want to, son ?” 

To Daddy’s surprise, Buddie stopped short and 
pondered. 

“That Madge ! Mm — well. She’s — ” he tried 
to put it mildly; “rather — ” he hesitated for the 
word; “rather unexpected. Still, Hallowe’en is 
Hallowe’en, and the Graemes have very good things 
to eat. Yes, I think I’d like to go.” 

The doctor nodded. During the past weeks, he 
had been making certain inquiries. The results of 
them had caused him to regret a little that he had 
been quite so stiff, a few weeks earlier. All men 
spoke well of the Graemes. Their generous-minded, 
simple humanity made one forgive the newness and 


78 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


the shininess of their belongings. And girls were 
good for boys; some girls, that is. From all ac- 
counts, Daddy suspected that Madge would be of the 
number. 

“All right. Here goes to answer.” And Buddie, 
forgetful of his luncheon, went dashing from the room. 
‘Tdl tell her I’ll be there at eight, sharp,” he called 
back, from over his shoulder. 

“And Tom,” his father called after him. 

Out of the distance came a mumbling which 
sounded dangerously like, — 

“Hang Tom ! Let him write his letters for him- 
self.” And then all was still save for the sound of boy- 
ish heels and padding paws upon the polished stairs. 

Later, after a period given up to composition, 
Buddie brought the resultant document to Daddy 
for approval. And Daddy lowered his eyes and 
stiffened the muscles of his lips as he read ; but, all 
honour to him, he made no changes nor corrections. 
All in all, in fact, he liked Buddie’s downright 
methods quite as well as he liked the elegant for- 
mality of Madge. 

“Dear Madge,” Buddie had written; “I will 
come to your Hallowe’en party, if you want me to. 
I like to go to parties, especially if there’s the two- 
step. I suppose we’ll bob for apples, so I’ll get my 
jaws in good working order. You can look for me 
at eight o’clock. 

“Yours Truly, 

“ Buddie Angell.” 

“ P. S. My father told me to tell you that Tom 
is coming, too.” 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 79 


Daddy, reading, smiled. He smiled again, when 
Buddie demanded the loan of his signet ring and his 
stick of wax ; but he let his young son have his way. 
It was a new note in Buddie’s make-up, this dawning 
hankering for elegance. Daddy smiled, and then 
he sighed a little. For all the unexpected phrasing 
of his note, was Buddie growing up and preparing to 
be a man upon his own account ? 

In spite of all of Daddy’s effort to delay them, 
eight o’clock was striking, when the two boys rounded 
the corner of the Graemes’ home. Buddie had been 
buoyant, eager, impatient for the evening which 
stretched away before him, an alluring prospect of 
much fun and feasting, mingled with skirmishes 
galore with Madge, for whose fighting powers he was 
beginning to have no small respect. He had groomed 
himself with care; he had spent an anxious half 
hour in front of his mirror, wrestling with his necktie, 
and trying the effect of brushing his hair into different 
angles and degrees of spatty lankness. Then, as a 
final offering upon the shrine of Society, he had 
waited till Tom had gone down to dinner, tiptoed 
to his room and emptied on his own handkerchief a 
good share of the contents of the bottle on Tom’s 
dressing-table. The bottle was labelled violet. Bud- 
die’s appreciation of odours was not too dainty; 
he took the label quite on trust, and never realized 
that Miss Myles had thoughtfully filled an empty 
bottle with the camphor which was her remedy and 
her preventive for any ill known to the life of man. 
Daddy realized it, though. However, by the time 
Buddie had been argued into parting with his soaked 
handkerchief, a good share of the camphor had trans- 


80 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


ferred itself to the lining of his pocket ; and 
he set out for the Graeme party, a half hour later, 
bearing about his person a reeking fragrance which 
suggested that he had been but just dismissed from 
an infection camp. Tom, in honest pity for his 
friend’s accident, and also in an honest wish to spare 
himself a little of the reek of camphor, had added 
a layer of strong, strong rose to the earlier one. 
The resulting flavour quite defied description; but 
Buddie was so pleased with his happy exit from his 
troubles that Daddy let him go, without a word. 

Tom, meanwhile, had dreaded the evening. He 
had not Buddie’s happy-go-lucky lack of self- 
consciousness. Moreover, he felt himself an after- 
thought, taken on as a matter of necessity. He 
dreaded the evening ; and he envied Buddie’s 
buoyant unconcern at going to a party in a strange 
house and among so many strangers. Porter, 
consulted by stealth when Buddie was well out 
of hearing, had implied that it was to be a very 
gorgeous party, with violins, and silver pencils, 
and any amount of things for supper. To be sure. 
Porter, as it proved, was absolutely wrong in his 
predictions ; but Tom had all his agonies of shyness, 
just the same. 

But, if Tom’s shyness was a long agony, Buddie’s 
was apoplectic in its suddenness and in the havoc 
that it created. It smote him, just as he was going 
up the steps, it dragged him back around the corner, 
and it kept him rounding that corner, back and 
forth, for full three quarters of an hour, while Tom 
followed at his elbow, murmuring feeble encourage- 
ments which he did not feel. 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 81 


The windows of the house were open, for the 
night was warm. From out of them came the 
sound of music, dance music, and college songs 
in lusty chorus ; waltzes, and Boola and Lord 
Jeffrey, and then a most alluring two-step. Voices 
came out, too, voices of boys and girls, not shrill 
or noisy, but mingling in a merry medley of laugh 
and chatter. Every now and then, the door swung 
open to admit another guest; every now and then, 
a figure, or a group of figures, halted in an open 
window, to rest a minute and, resting and talking 
quietly, to gaze down into the street below. It 
was at these minutes that Buddie’s seizure betrayed 
the fact that it was not paralysis. His speed in 
getting out of sight around the nearest corner: 
this would have won him a permanent record in 
any Marathon. 

At the end of one such race, Tom challenged him 
summarily. 

“What are you doing, anyhow?” 

“I — er — My shoe came untied,” Buddie said 
lamely. 

“What if it did?” Tom’s voice was callous. 
His courage had waxed, while that of Buddie had 
been waning. Moreover, the fieshpots, savoured 
from beneath the open windows, were more tempt- 
ing than he had dreamed of their being. He began 
to grow impatient for a nearer view of them. 

Buddie’s excuses went on limping. 

“I just wanted to tie it up,” he answered. 

“Well, you didn’t want to go into the next block 
but two to do it ; did you ? ” 

Buddie felt that he was being bullied, and to a 


82 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


most unjust extent. He also felt that his line of 
self-defence was a weak one, and he declined to 
enter into argument. Instead, — 

“Who got his tie on, wrong side out?” he asked 
irrelevantly. 

And then there was a lull in the hostilities. 

Tom finally braced himself anew. 

“I say, Buddie, it’s getting late,” he urged. 

“What if ’tis?” 

“You said you’d be there at eight,” Tom persisted. 

Buddie, for the dozenth time, had been edging 
his way nearer to the steps. If Tom had had his 
wits about him, he would have left out his question 
and, taking Buddie by the nearer elbow, rushed 
him up the steps and through the doorway, there 
and then. Unhappily, Tom was fond of argument ; 
and, moreover, he was a little bit in awe of Buddie. 
Therefore, he missed his chance. 

“You told her eight o’clock sharp,” he persisted 
again, just as Buddie was about to put his foot upon 
the doorstep. 

Buddie backed off as suddenly as if the doorstep 
had been bursting into fiame. Tom supposed that 
it was the subject which had made him change his 
mind; that Buddie had backed away, the better 
to lay down his argument. Tom had not seen a 
red-brown head pause for a minute in the window 
just above them. 

“A man never goes to parties, when he says he 
will,” Buddie muttered. 

Tom longed to remind his companion that, not 
so very long ago, he had escaped from a corner of 
Madge’s argument by the weak-kneed plea that 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 83 


he was not a man. He held his tongue, though, 
not out of mercy for Buddie’s feelings, but out of 
a prudent fear lest, goaded, Buddie would balk 
entirely. Tom had begun to have some curiosity 
and no small longing to behold the glories painted 
by Porter’s facile tongue. 

“Come along in, Buddie,” he besought his friend. 

“I’m going to, in a minute.” 

“What’s the use of waiting?” 

“It’s too early to — to — to be stylish,” Buddie 
objected. 

“It must be half -past eight.” 

“Your watch is fast.” 

“I timed it, this noon ! ” Tom’s accent showed 
that an old grievance had reared its head in Buddie’s 
words. 

Buddie clutched at the new subject as a time-killer. 

“What by?” 

“School clock. Come on.” 

Buddie sought a new excuse. 

“Just wait a minute ; can’t you ?” 

“What for?” As Tom put the question, a fresh 
dance measure came jigging down to their ears. 

“I — I want to get rid of a little of this camphor.” 

“Oh, come along ! Don’t keep it up, all night. 
She’ll be mad as anything, if you don’t go.” 

“Let her.” 

“You promised.” 

“What if I did ? It’s none of your — ” 

Tom interrupted by seizing Buddie by the nearer 
shoulder blade. 

“Buddie, you’re afraid,” he taunted his friend 
rashly. 


84 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Then I caught it from you. Let go my coat ! ” 

“When you come up these steps ! ” 

“Let go! You’ll tear it ! 

“Then come I ” 

There were sounds of a scuffle. Then, — 

“Stop ! ” 

“Let me alone, then I ” 

“There ! You’ve untied my necktie I ” 

“Serve you right ! ” 

There were more sounds of a scuffle, louder, this 
time, and more forgetful of that tricky sort of still- 
ness which makes voices carry so far across the even- 
ing air. And then above them, for they were on 
the bottom steps of the long flight, the house door 
opened, and a stiff voice barked out a stern com- 
mand, — 

“Boys, be horf of ’ere, or I’ll telephone for a 
horflcer 1 ” 

Quite as a matter of course, the boys went, both 
of them, and with some degree of haste. And, as 
they went, the waltz died away and ended, to be 
followed by a two-step, just such a two-step as had 
been in Buddie’s dreams, when he had written his 
letter of acceptance. And Porter had said there 
would be silver things for souvenirs, and ghost 
tricks, and wondrous things to eat. 

Next morning, a haughty and forbidding Buddie 
had made his appearance in school. His manner 
showed plainly that he would not welcome in- 
quiries of any kind whatever. The same manner, 
indeed, had marked his home-coming, the night 
before, and Tom, on his part, was too footsore and 
weary, too terrified by Buddie’s threats of ven- 


A TWO-STEP AND A RETREAT 85 


geance, to give any but the vaguest and most mud- 
dled answers to Miss Myles’s kindly questionings 
about the night’s festivity. Dr. Angell, quite 
mercifully, had been called away on an all-night 
case, so the two boys. Miss Myles once evaded, 
could go to bed in peace, and breakfast in peace, 
next morning. 

Their coming home had not been early enough 
to arouse suspicion. Buddie had seen to that. 
Tom was still a little vague about the shortest 
routes to anywhere. Granted enough corner-turn- 
ing at the start, after nightfall he was none too 
sure which way was the Bronx, which way the 
Battery. And Buddie, between the time of the 
footman’s order and the stiitable hour for a return 
from a nice party, had covered a generous share 
of the side streets between those two extremes. 
Covering them, he also had covered Tom neck 
deep in explanation of the things that would happen 
to him if he, as Buddie phrased it, blabbed. It 
was a weary, dreary Thomas who at last trudged 
up the Angell front stairs and put himself to bed, 
too weary and too dreary even to object when 
Ebenezer, sleepy, yet overjoyed at the ending of 
his solitary evening, put himself into bed in the 
wrong room, under the drowsy impression it was 
Buddie’s. 

At the mid-morning recess. Porter descended 
upon Buddie. 

“Where were you, last night?” he queried, 
with a bluntness that seemed to Buddie exceed- 
ingly ill-bred. 

“Home.” 


86 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“But Madge said you were coming.” 

Buddie did his best to look mystified. 

“Coming where 

“Her party.” 

Buddie’s start of surprise was capital. 

“Oh, sure !” he said. “I’m sorry.” 

“But where were you ?” 

Buddie straightened his lips, then shut them, 
after the fashion of Miss Myles. 

“I got busy,” he responded quietly. And then, 
“Theo, we’ve got to go in for any amount more 
coaching, if we are to play Lawrenceville. Our 
punting is about the worst we’ve ever had. Come 
along and talk to Father Gibson. What did you 
say. Porter ? Nice party ? Shame I missed it ; 
but one can’t take in everything that comes along.” 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 

H owever, he reckoned without Madge, without 
Madge and Daddy. 

After carrying things with a high, high hand, 
all day, he met ruin, later, while they sat at dinner. 
And the ruin came to him by way of that despised 
tool in a boy’s undoing : a pretty girl. 

How Madge knew their hour for dinner, or whether 
she did know it, or only put in a shrewd guess, 
Buddie never cared to inquire. Some things are 
best left to the imagination. 

Just in the early stages of the grapes and Daddy’s 
cup of coffee. Miss Myles appeared upon the thresh- 
old. 

“Dr. Angell,” she announced; “there is a lady 
waiting to speak to you on the telephone. I told 
her you were at dinner; but she said it was impor- 
tant, and she wouldn’t keep you but a minute.” 

The doctor frowned. Telephone calls were for- 
bidden during meal hours. He was human, even 
if he was professional; his mealtimes must be his 
own. As a rule. Miss Myles obeyed him to the 
letter. He wondered at her laxness now. He had 
not yet encountered the persuasions of Madge 
Graeme’s tongue. 

He encountered them now, though ; and, in 
spite of the disquieting nature of the tidings, he 
rather liked the girl, though he suspected that she 
87 


88 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


was telephoning without her father’s consent. How- 
ever, her manner was too full of mischief to be 
really pert; she managed to throw over her absurd 
inquiries a flavour of friendly anxiety which would 
have been delicious, had not the doctor found the 
need for her making them a little bit upsetting. 

His lips were smiling; but his eyes were grave, 
as he came back to the table. 

“Where were you, last night, Buddie?” he asked, 
after he had chosen his grapes. 

Buddie strangled on a seed, then he rallied. 

“Madge had her party, you know,” he reminded 
his father tactfully. 

“And you went ?” 

“You saw us off,” Buddie reminded him again. 

The doctor frowned slightly. It was not like 
Buddie to evade. Because it was so foreign to his 
habits. Daddy jumped to the conclusion that, for 
once in his life, Buddie had something really wrong 
to conceal. 

“How late did you stay ?” he asked, with as much 
casualness as he could muster. 

“Not so very long,” Buddie assured him glibly. 

Daddy bent a keen glance on his young son. 
His young son strangled for a second time, cast a 
hasty glance at Tom, and turned scarlet. 

“Where did you go then?” Daddy’s voice was 
growing more grave on every question. He felt 
that he was coming nearer and nearer to a real 
crisis, and the crisis was bound to hurt him. Always, 
up to now, he had trusted Buddie absolutely. 

“We came home,” Buddie told him, with literal 
truth; and, as he spoke, he launched a kick at 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 89 


Tom’s ankles, to call attention to his own tactful 
truthfulness. 

The kick was his undoing. It had been very 
sudden, and far, far more energetic than Buddie, 
in his nervousness, had been at all aware. 

“Ouch ! ” Tom remonstrated. 

The doctor’s eyes went from one face to the other. 
Buddie looked uneasy, Tom exasperated. 

“Buddie ! ” The word came with a heavy accent 
of rebuke, new to Buddie’s ears. To the doctor’s 
no small surprise, it was greeted with a sudden 
roar of laughter. 

Then, — 

“It’s on me. Chub,” Buddie said resignedly. 
“Go on and tell.” 

Tom chuckled. 

“Can’t do it justice, Buddie. Tell, yourself.” 

Mystified, Daddy gave up his coffee, and stared 
alternately at the two boys, fast lapsing into hys- 
terics. 

“‘Boys, be horf o’ ’ere, or I’ll telephone for 
a horficer ! ’ ” Buddie was proclaiming between 
gasps. 

“Took us for a pair of merry hoodlums, out on 
a lark,” Tom added brokenly. 

Light began to dawn. Madge had not been 
explicit in her inquiries. So sorry ! Were the 
boys very, very angry at the footman’s blunder ? 
She was looking out the window; she had been 
watching them, all down the street. In the end, 
it was so sudden ; really, they had gone, before 
she could call out to stop them. Would Dr. Angell 
tell them how sorry and ashamed she was.^ It 


90 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


took more courage than she owned, to speak to 
Buddie, herself. And so on. 

“But what were you doing, anyway?” Daddy 
queried, not unnaturally. 

“Just getting ready to go in,” Buddie said meekly. 
Then he grew very busy, deciding which grapes 
were the best ones. 

Tom, though, came to the point. He felt it was 
high time. He liked Buddie ; but Daddy he adored. 
Between the two of them, he felt there was no ques- 
tion which should be spared uneasiness. 

“Buddie funked, at the last minute, and wouldn’t 
go inside. I was trying to haul him up the steps, 
for I knew, once we were in, he’d get on all right. 
I suppose we made more row than we knew. Any- 
how, a man all over buttons banged the door open 
and ordered us to get out, and banged the door 
shut again.” 

Then the doctor comprehended fully. However, — 

“What then ?” he asked. 

“We lit out. Really, there wasn’t much else 
that we could do. We walked around a while, to 
get cooled off,” Tom mercifully forebore to say 
how long the walk had lasted ; “ and then we came 
home to bed.” 

There was a silence. At last, — 

“Buddie, I wouldn’t eat all the grapes, if I were 
you,” the doctor warned him. “I can’t have you 
getting ill just now, because we have a social duty 
on our hands.” 

“Wntiat ?” Buddie looked up, alarmed. 

“To-morrow afternoon, you and I are going to 
drive out to the Graemes’, to make our apologies.” 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 91 


“Daddy ! Not ! ” 

“We can’t get out of it, son. We don’t want to 
go, either of us ; . but we must face the music like 
men. Chubbie, I’m not taking you along. You can 
go, next time; but now I rather think it will be 
easier for Buddie to put it through, alone.” 

It was late, the next afternoon, when Daddy 
drove his car into his own home street. He looked 
serene. Buddie was obviously beaming. The call, 
once its first five minutes had vanished into the 
past, had been a huge success. Mrs. Graeme had 
had shortbread with her tea. Then she had ordered 
her husband to take the doctor to his library to 
smoke, while Madge escorted Buddie to see her 
new Pom puppy eat his tea-time bread and milk. 
It would be hard to say whether the father or the 
son had been sorrier when the clocks warned them 
that they had outstayed the proper limits of their 
call. 

One bit of conversation lingered long in Buddie’s 
mind. 

“What do you think about my cousin ” Madge 
demanded suddenly from above the puppy. 

“He’s all right,” Buddie said shiftily. 

Madge, without lifting up her head, eyed Buddie 
through her lashes. 

“You know you don’t think he’s any such thing,” 
she contradicted fiatly, yet without any bitterness. 
“What’s the matter with him, anyway ?” 

“I don’t know.” Buddie was loath to give 
opinion. Cousins were cousins. He liked Madge, 
and he was not too sure yet of his ground before 
her mocking, critical young eyes. 


92 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


This time, the eyes looked squarely at him. 

‘T do, then. He thinks he knows it all. What 
is worse, he does — almost. He needs to make 
some sort of a tremendous smash, to have it taken 
out of him. Then he’ll be all right. Can he play 
football?” 

“Yes ” 

“Weli?” 

“Father Gibson says so.” 

“Father Gibson generally knows.” Madge gave 
a funny little nod of agreement. Then she stooped 
and picked up the puppy, nuzzling its milky whiskers 
against her round young cheek. “He’s asked me 
to your final game — not Father Gibson, of course — 
and I’m going. Are you in it ? ” 

“ Sure ! ” Buddie tried to speak with due mod- 
esty, and failed. 

The girl looked up at him sharply. 

“Really? He said he wasn’t sure.” Then, puppy 
and all, she led the way back to the drawing-room, 
in answer to a summons from her mother. 

And Buddie pondered. Later, that evening, 
after he had put Tom in possession of all the history 
of their visit : later, he pondered again. The 
result of his ponderings he imparted to Theo, the 
next morning. 

Theo made no bones of speaking out his own 
opinion. 

“Plain sneak, Buddie. Of course, he knew you’d 
play.” 

“Unless Father Gibson — ” 

“Fudge ! ” Theo’s syllable came like the driv- 
ing of a cork. 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 93 


“You can’t ever tell,” Buddie said gloomily. 

Theo’s reply was more logical than it sounded. 

“Father Gibson would be like the two-headed 
serpent he was telling us about in class.” 

“Not so sure. I’ve never had a real season 
with you. Nothing but track and baseball.” 

“He can tell, though. And, about Porter: if 
he cheeks you, dare him to try a handspring back- 
wards. That will lay him out, for sure.” 

Buddie continued to be gloomy. 

“For sure; but not for football.” 

Theo eyed his friend cornerwise. 

“What’s got into you, Buddie? You never 
used to go on your nerves.” 

Buddie forced himself to a jauntiness he did not 
feel. Not for worlds on worlds would he have 
confessed to Theo that the possible presence of the 
red-brown head upon the grandstand could have 
made such a change in all his attitude to football 
politics. 

But change there was, for certain. Up to now, 
Buddie had taken things as they had come, without 
giving much thought to them, one way or the other. 
To be sure they generally came. Now, though, 
Buddie was looking forward anxiously. As much 
as a boy can worry, he was worrying. He had 
been a mighty magnate in the republic of the school. 
He was liked; his word carried weight. And he 
knew he played good football. The worst of it 
all was, he had a dim suspicion that Porter played 
better, and he was absolutely certain that, for the 
good of the team and school, they naturally would 
be candidates for the same position. They both 


94 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


punted, and punted well. Buddie was stronger and 
quicker; but he missed out, every now and then, 
just on account of his unthinking haste. Porter 
was absolutely sure. But Buddie also knew what 
team play meant, knew that the other boys were 
loyal to him. Porter hadn’t an atom of influence 
in the school. 

For that reason, too. Porter could be counted 
on to do his careful best. Anybody knows that 
influence comes from being put on any of the teams ; 
and Porter had made more than one try after that 
priceless gift, had made the try, and failed. Bud- 
die had nothing of that sort, by way of an incentive. 
His play would be just play, apart from any hanker- 
ing for reward; just play, for itself, and for the 
record of the school, and — er — for the spark 
which he was devoutly wishing he could bring to 
Madge’s eyes. If he knew anything of girls, Madge 
was the sort to recognize a good play, when she 
saw one. And yet, if he punted, and missed, and 
the game was lost, then what about the school ? 

And so the first week in November came, and 
went. The days of practise came and went, also, 
and the matter seemed no nearer to a settlement 
than it had done, when the school came together, 
in the fall. Porter was growing disagreeably cocky, 
Buddie stern. The boys, left to themselves, would 
have decreed that they would not have Porter on 
any ^account ; but the English master, watching 
symptoms, held them down. Unhappily, none 
of the other boys could punt at all, to speak of. 
The battle, in reality, had narrowed to a duel, and 
that without any seconds to take up the foils when 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 95 


the two combatants had laid them down. It was 
just Buddie and just Porter. That was all. And, 
as the third week of November began, and the 
game was drawing near and nearer, the applause 
was all for Buddie, but the game seemed to be in 
Porter’s hands. 

And the school ? 

Buddie carried that question to bed with him 
at night. It caused him to kick about in his sleep, 
to the grumbling resentment of Ebenezer, who 
was accustomed to an undisturbed possession of 
a good three-quarters of the bed. Buddie carried 
the question to breakfast with him, in the morning. 
It caused him to spatter grapefruit juice into Daddy’s 
eyes, and to fall into silent meditations between 
scallops of his slice of toast. He took it to school, 
and he also took it to the Field where it mastered 
him completely and wrecked his play. 

Porter never let anything wreck his play, not 
even the silences that followed the best of his achieve- 
ments. And the school ought to win at any cost. 
Almost any. For some of the boys, watching 
Porter, were saying that they would rather lose 
the game outright than have Lawrenceville think- 
ing they would stand for anybody like Porter. 
Not that Porter really had anything against him, 
except his own cocksure conceit. That was a good 
share of the trouble. The other boys were coming 
to spite him all the more, because he offered them 
no actual handle for their dislike. 

Poor Buddie took the matter hard. This was 
the first time in his life that he had faced a real 
decision, and he found out that he must put it 


96 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


through alone. Just once, he had tried to squeeze 
an opinion out of Daddy. Daddy had put a dozen 
questions, had listened silently till the long, long 
answers had reached the very end. After, he had 
smoked almost a whole cigar in silence. Then, — 

“Son,” he said gravely; “it’s not an easy ques- 
tion, not a bit. I wish I could help you decide it; 
but I’m afraid I’m too much an outsider, and yet 
too partial, to be able to be any great amount of 
help.” 

Nor had he been, save in the one essential : he 
had made Buddie sure that he understood the crisis 
was a real one, real and great. 

One morning, Buddie felt he had arrived at a 
decision. The Head had chosen the morning lesson 
out of the parables ; and Buddie, caught by a stray 
word that seemed to fit the case, left off laying 
pleats in his trouser legs to listen. Later, he im- 
parted his decision to Theo. Theo, albeit the son 
of a clergyman, received it profanely. 

“Shucks ! ” he said. “Been reading Elsie? 

And Buddie blushed, and changed the subject. 
Later, in going over the matter for another time, 
he decided to leave the whole affair to the coach 
and Father Gibson. 

Of course, one did not talk about such matters 
to the coach. Father Gibson, though, was quite 
another matter. Father Gibson lived at the school, 
because he and the Head had been chums as boys, 
and there never had seemed to come a proper time 
for slacking on the intimacy. Buddie sought him 
in his room, early one afternoon, and demanded 
audience, that final privilege asked by the boys 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 97 


only in seasons of extreme need. Not that, asked, 
it ever was denied. It merely was that something 
about Father Gibson made them realize it was a 
privilege, and one not to be demanded lightly, 
nor too often. 

Father Gibson, his clerical coat unbuttoned and 
slipping back until its corners touched the floor, 
his wavy dark hair pushed back from his forehead 
and his thin lips puckered around his pipe : Father 
Gibson listened in perfect silence. When Buddie 
had quite emptied out his mind of all his recent 
meditations and worriments. Father Gibson nodded. 

“It’s a problem, Buddie,” he said, much as Daddy 
had done before him. “The worst of it is, I can 
see both sides.” 

“You generally can,” Buddie interrupted him 
tempestuously. “That’s why I’m here.” 

A sudden light kindled in Father Gibson’s eyes. 
A random word like that, struck out of some bit 
of brave, boyish discussion : that was the great 
reward which came to him, now and then, to make 
him realize his work was worth the while. 

“Thank you, Buddie,” he answered gravely 
now, as man to man. 

Once more he smoked in silence for a little while. 
Then, — 

“It’s this way, as I understand it,” he said simply ; 
“you would like to play, naturally; the boys all 
want you. You play a better game than most of 
them, too; that is, along certain lines. But you 
think Porter plays better. You think, whereas 
you may help to win out, he is sure to. Is that it ?” 

“Just about.” 


98 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Mm.” There was another interval. “And the 
trouble is that you are slated for the same place 
on the team. Why didn’t you learn to tackle, 
you young sinner, as I advised ? ” 

“Too fat,” Buddie told him composedly; “and 
not enough grip in my arms.” 

“Where’s your trapeze ? That would have helped.” 

Buddie had the grace to blush. 

“I didn’t think of that.” 

“You should. It’s your business to think of 
anything that will improve your play. Besides, 
I — But never mind that.” And then the dark 
face broke into a smile. “ ’Fess up, Buddie. You 
know you believed that the backs are the show 
men of the team.” 

Buddie gave a short nod. 

“Fact, Father. You’ve got me there.” 

The next interval was the longest one of all. 
Then Father Gibson rose. 

“Buddie, I think it’s got to resolve itself into 
the question whether you care more about football, 
or about the school,” he said, and his eyes, search- 
ing Buddie’s face, yet gave no hint of the way his 
own choice was tending. 

Buddie shut his teeth, drew in his breath between 
them, and waited. For a minute, the room was 
very still. Then, — 

“Will you fix it up with the coach. Father Gib- 
son ? ” 

Father Gibson’s eyes were pitiful, as well as 
keen. Moreover, he had known a good many 
boys, had watched them wince in similar conditions. 
Buddie had stiffened. 


FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM 99 


“You’d best have a day to think it over, Buddie.” 

“I don’t need it, sir.” 

And, stiff to the last, Buddie saluted, and went 
away downstairs. Down in the coatroom, however, 
the stiffening all went out of him. Only the great 
gray cat, mascot of the school, was there to see it, 
though. Buddie found a certain comfort in the 
way she wound herself in and out between his legs 
in sympathy. 

Next day, the school was buzzing with gossip, 
hot with wrath. Just before school, the coach 
had quietly announced to one of the groups that 
Porter would punt in the Lawrenceville game, not 
Buddie Angell. 

And Buddie who, despite his name, was not 
wholly of the stuff whence the angelic host is sup- 
posed to be recruited : Buddie, out at the Field, 
that afternoon, gained no small amount of moral 
support out of the discovery that the conqueror’s 
wreath of triumph may have its sharp, sharp thorns. 
Porter’s most brilliant plays fell with a thud into 
a disapproving silence. 


CHAPTER NINE 


THE GAME 

that that sort of thing could last, however. 

The boyish point of view is not inflated to the 
point where it can long maintain such a level. Not 
yet. 

The boys adored Buddie, bent an attentive ear to 
his advice upon the coming game, bowed to his will. 
They also condoled with him more or less bluntly 
upon the action of the coach whose was the decision, 
they supposed, which had exalted Porter and over- 
thrown Buddie from his mighty seat. Buddie let 
them suppose so. That was part of the game, 
as he had judged it must be played out. Happily, 
as he knew more than they did of the true secret 
of the situation, their sympathy did not get on his 
nerves and temper as it would have done, if dis- 
appointment had made him “touchy.’’ Sure of 
himself, he could forgive the occasional tactless- 
ness in the general spirit of good will. 

And yet — 

It wasn’t easy, in those last days, to stand on the 
side-lines and look on; to see the tide slowly set- 
ting in the direction of Porter whose smugness 
increased disagreeably under the increasing ap- 
plause; to feel, away down inside himself, that 
he, the substitute, could punt almost as well as 
Porter did; and, more than Porter, command the 
100 


THE GAME 


101 


loyal backing of his team; above all else, to know 
that, if he said one single word to Theo, even to 
Chubbie Neal, he would find himself reinstated 
at the helm of things, with Porter in his proper 
place as substitute. 

Somehow or other, though, Buddie managed it. 
Moreover, he managed it alone, without appeal 
to anybody, even Daddy, for understanding and 
support. It had been hard to tell Daddy, in the 
first place. Daddy had been quarter, in his senior 
year at Yale; he cared more than he liked Buddie 
to know for his young son’s prowess in sports. 
Buddie did know, though. Few secrets could 
exist between people who understood each other 
as well as he and Daddy; it was not always a ne- 
cessity to put them into words. The knowledge 
made it just a little harder to explain to Daddy 
that Porter was to play Lawrenceville ; that he 
himself was only substitute. In the days that 
followed, Buddie wondered just a little that Daddy 
seemed so lacking in his usual tact and insight. 
As a general thing. Daddy’s questions and comments 
soothed and salved his son’s injured feelings, not 
probed them to the quick. But now Daddy, not 
content with facts, demanded reasons, discussed 
remedies, even offered, if Buddie wished, to see 
the coach and find out if, from his own experience, 
he could help to put Buddie where he belonged. 

Buddie writhed and squirmed; but he did not 
draw back, one single inch, from the position he 
had chosen for his stand. Daddy, in the end of 
all, nodded to himself with perfect satisfaction. 
Buddie was a good sport, one of the best. For 


102 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Father Gibson, that first night after Buddie’s visit 
to him, had called up Daddy, explaining things 
and congratulating him on having such a son. 
Daddy’s later conversation had been dictated by 
his wish to see whether Buddie’s courage would 
hold out to the bitter end, without his funking. 

It is by no means sure, though, that it would have 
held out, without Madge. Curiously enough, al- 
though their acquaintance had been of the shortest, 
and as stormy as it had been short, it appeared to 
Buddie that Madge was the solitary inhabitant of 
his world with sufiiciently clear eyes to see through 
the seeming down to the fact. Daddy, for the first 
time in his life, had been an utter failure in compre- 
hension ; Tom had argued alternately that it was a 
shame, and that it might be best for the team, after 
all ; and Miss Myles had revelled and splashed in a 
perfect sea of moral reflections on the advantages 
to character born of a little disappointment. Under 
the bracing influence of her own splashing, she even 
reached the point of calling Buddie “ Laddie.” And 
Buddie, by that time, was too tired and dejected to 
resent that final ignominy. It was all of a piece 
with all the rest of it, and horrid. He had not had 
the slightest wish to pose as a self-sacrificing hero; 
but it did seem as if somebody. Daddy, or Theo, or 
somebody, might have had the common-sense to 
understand. 

Only once, though, he regretted the thing that he 
had done. It was upon the first occasion that Miss 
Myles spoke to him as ‘‘ Laddie.” 

“Never mind, dear laddie,” she told him, late one 
night at the end of a detailed examination on what 


THE GAME 


103 


had really happened, and on what Buddie really 
felt, away down in his heart, about the happening. 
“It hurts you now; but the time will surely come 
when you can find a lovely rose tree growing out 
from the spot above the scar.” 

The mixture of ideas maddened Buddie almost as 
much as did the moral maxim it involved. If Miss 
Myles had been ninety and bedridden, with knitting 
and a frilly cap, he would not so much have minded. 
But she was scant thirty, and fat, and wore a tur- 
quoise necklace in the evening. Buddie banged the 
door behind him, hard, when he went away. 

It was the next night that they all went to dinner 
at the Graemes’; not Miss Myles and Ebenezer, 
but Daddy and Chubbie and himself. Dinner was 
rather early, on account of Daddy’s night visit to an 
east-side hospital, for Mr. Graeme had insisted on 
time for a smoke and a talk in the library, afterwards. 
While the talk was going on, and while Tom was 
answering the questions of motherly Mrs. Graeme, 
Madge and Buddie had departed in search of the 
Pom puppy. They found him in the basement, 
being bathed by a gigantic man-servant whose 
overalls, donned for the occasion, appeared to Buddie 
rather needless, considering the amount of soap and 
puppy involved. 

Madge, whose attitude to the Pom was almost as 
adoring as was Buddie’s towards the shaggy Ebene- 
zer : Madge insisted that they should stand by and 
watch the whimpering little bundle through all the 
various stages of suds and rinsing, of towellings and 
brushing. Else, she argued gravely between en- 
dearing words fiung at the whimpering puppy, he 


104 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


might think the end of the world was near, and 
nobody in reach to stretch out a helping hand. The 
puppy restored to his usual state of fluffiness, how- 
ever, she tucked him under her arm and started for 
the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, she halted 
suddenly. 

“Sit down,” she said. “I want to talk.” And, 
for the basement stairs led to the furnace room, she 
tucked up the skirt of her pink gown, sat down and 
took the puppy on her knee. 

Buddie wondered a little at her choice of place for 
conversation. An upper flight of stairs would have 
seemed to him more natural. However, he sat down. 

For a minute or two, Madge appeared to find some 
trouble in coming to the point. She cuddled the 
drowsy puppy between her round bare arms; she 
perched him up upon her knee, and parted his hair 
this way and that. Then, with an abrupt gesture 
that set the little dog to blinking, she demolished the 
partings and laid him down again to rest. 

“Buddie, I want to say something very confi- 
dential. You won’t be mad ?” 

Buddie looked up uneasily. The red-brown eyes 
were staring straight up into his own. He saw a 
little worried expression in their depths. What was 
coming now ? He braced himself. 

“’Course not.” 

“Because I don’t want you to be, or to think I 
am sticking in my nose where it doesn’t belong. 
I only wanted to tell you that I’m sure I know 
all about the football.” 

“What football ?” 

“You, and Algy.” 


THE GAME 


105 


Porter answered to the name of Algernon. His 
middle name was Valentine ; but he had suppressed 
that fact. He felt it would add nothing to his 
prowess in the school. 

Buddie flushed. He had expected better things 
than that from Madge. 

“What about us?” His voice was brusque. 

The puppy forgotten, she faced him without 
flinching, although her eyes glittered at his accent. 

“About,” she said deliberately; “your giving up 
your place to Algy.” 

Buddie gasped. Temptation was close at hand. 
He wavered. Madge would be very comfortable to 
talk things over with. Then he threw temptation 
from him. 

“ I didn’t,” he flbbed. 

A smile took the place of the glitter in her eyes. 
She knew he was fibbing, and she liked him all the 
better for it. 

“That’s all right,” she said. “But, you see, I 
know. Nobody told me. I thought it out, myself, 
the night Algy told me he was sure to be on the team. 
He was bragging fearfully. I just sat still, and 
watched him, and wondered how it happened. I 
knew you, you see, and knew you were trying for the 
same place, and I couldn’t understand.” 

Buddie reddened to the ears. Her final phrase 
spoke volumes of hearty liking, even of girlish 
admiration. And that, after his earlier adventures 
on the way into her friendship ! Then he sternly 
put down his rising satisfaction, weighted it with the 
belief that girls were queer things, after all ; that one 
never could predict what they were going to like. 


106 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


But Madge was still speaking. 

“So I thought, and thought, and thought; and 
finally I thought it out. You needn’t,’’ for Buddie 
was starting to speak; “needn’t answer back, be- 
cause I know I am right. Algy does play well, 
even if he’s too conceited over it for any use, and 
even if the boys do hate him. Of course, they do. 
It’s all I can do to stand him, sometimes, even if he 
is my cousin, and I’m nothing but a girl. And you 
knew he played well ; you thought maybe he played 
better than you; and you cared enough about the 
game, and the school, and all that, to step out and 
let him have his chance. What’s more, I think it 
was perfectly splendid of you; it’s just about the 
same thing as if you’d won the game.” 

The words were echoing in Buddie’s ears, two 
days later, when he trudged — not trotted — out 
along the side-line of the field. Trotting was for 
team, not substitutes, as was the middle of the field. 
And Buddie, always before this, had trotted, well in 
the van, well into the middle of the day’s arena. 
For just a minute, his eyes burned hotly. Then 
he shut his lips. A minute after, Madge’s words 
came back to him : just about the same thing as if 
he had won the game. We-el, perhaps. And yet, 
not the same thing at all. He rubbed his fist back 
and forth across his nose, then drew it across his 
eyes with stealthy haste. Then he stared across at 
the crowded stand. Did he imagine it; or did a 
brown-clad arm wave eagerly in his direction ? 
He answered with a gesture that might be a response, 
or a mere accident, according to the person who was 
watching. After, a little bit consoled, he squatted 


THE GAME 


107 


down not far from the side-lines, to watch the game 
out, waiting for a chance which, he knew within 
himself, would never come. 

Old Dame Nature is sometimes very cranky, 
especially when it gets near the last end of Novem- 
ber. She is tired, by that time, and no wonder; 
and she grows careless in the matter of the weather 
she turns out for football matches. That day, 
though, she must have been in good humour, for 
players and lookers-on alike agreed that it was 
perfect, perfect for the game, cold enough to make 
one think about one’s thickest gloves and sweater, 
but cold with the crispness of the northland, not with 
the damp that lurks along the coasts. There was 
no wind at all, and the sun hung like a golden orange 
against the bright blue sky. Really, no wonder 
that every one agreed that the day was ideal, and 
ought to bring out the best kind of a game. 

And the game ? 

It was not long before Buddie had lost all sense of 
personal grievance, lost all thought of anything but 
the good showing of his mates, especially of Porter. 
Porter was playing brilliantly ; better, by far, 
Buddie was honest enough to admit to himself, 
than he could possibly have done. Buddie was 
on his legs, by now, prancing excitedly up and down 
and adding his frenzied quota to the general chorus 
sung, or, rather, bellowed in a boyish unison, — 

“ Oh, Porter ! Oh, Porter ! 

You can kick as no one ever kicked before. 

You’re a wonder, 

Kick like thunder, 

Lawrenceville will never — ” 


108 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


But, in spite of the enthusiasm, and the cheering, in 
spite of the individual play which was growing better 
with each minute, in spite of Porter’s punting which 
was far, far beyond anything the opposing team 
could show: in spite of all this, something was 
wrong with the game. The home team played 
well; but Lawrenceville was playing better. Its 
boys were older, heavier, stronger, boys who were 
using that team as a stepping-stone to the Y. they 
hoped to win, a little later on ; boys to whom foot- 
ball was the chief event of the whole year, not of the 
single season. 

To be sure, the English coach was making good. 
He had studied football tactics the world over, had 
given any amount of thought to working up his 
team play. Moreover, at every critical point where 
it was possible. Porter, cocky, self-assured and eager, 
came to the rescue and drove the ball down, down the 
field amid the cheering of his frantic and admiring 
mates. But always it came back again, flying, 
bouncing, rolling, or hugged in boyish arms. The 
brilliant play was on one side, the strength upon the 
other. Time would decide between them ; and time 
was hurrying by, and the scoring was two to one 
for Lawrenceville. The one point had been made 
chiefly by Porter, and early. Since then, Lawrence- 
ville had been upon its guard, watching him intently. 
It was not minded to have its well-made line set at 
naught by the kicking of that slim youngster with 
the smile of a prig and the manners of a dressed-up 
monkey. Lawrenceville boys were made of other 
stuff than Porter, and they had the scantest sort of 
liking for people of his kind. 


THE GAME 


109 


Nevertheless, the intermission came and went, 
and still the scoring, albeit low, was mainly on the 
side of Lawrenceville, still the one figure on the home 
team’s score was largely due to Porter. And on 
Porter now was bent most of the attention, on him 
was heaped the home team’s hopes of scoring. He 
knew it ; indeed, he could not well help it. The air 
was thick with his name and with shoutings of the 
couplet, 

“ You*re a wonder. 

Kick like thunder.” 

And Porter was not one to lose his hearing of his 
own name, coupled with shouts and cheerings, not 
even in the wildest chaos that ever deafened athlete 
upon any field. Once, even, as he snatched the 
ball from a yellow-headed giant just ahead of him, 
he risked anything, even the capture of the ball, long 
enough to nod and wave his hand in recognition of 
the cheers that cleft the air. Instantly the cheers 
changed to a muffled moan, and then went out in 
an agony of waiting. What would that little cad 
do next? But Porter merely smiled, dodged one 
man, slid under the swooping arms of another and 
came up behind him, facing a space clear and large 
enough for the most perfect punt imaginable. Then, 
his lesson swiftly learned, he pretended unconcern at 
the redoubled shrieks, as he went rushing forward 
after the flying ball. 

Buddie had had some trouble to keep from swelling 
the general moan. Then his throat had tightened 
and his eyes had burned, as he had watched the play 
which followed instantly, just such a play as he would 


no THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


so have liked to make ; but never, never could, not 
if he had lived to be an hundred. He felt no envy, 
though, nothing but whole-souled admiration; nor 
did he feel any especial wish to cheer. Time was 
too nearly up ; the game too nearly centred in Porter’s 
hands, to let him care to do anything but stand agape, 
and stare after the flying ball and at the slim, trim 
figure rushing after it. In that minute, Buddie knew 
that his sacrifice had made good. They could not 
win, of course ; useless to think of that, against those 
well-trained giants. However, they would make a 
decent showing, and count on Porter to hold down 
the score. 

And then ! 

It seemed an eternity before the whistle blew 
again, and Buddie found himself walking out upon 
the field, walking on legs that appeared to be moving 
of their own accord, carrying him forward without 
his having much to do about it. Five minutes more 
to play; the ball almost in the middle of the field, 
and he, a substitute, jerked into the heart of the very 
finish to make what he could of the tattered end of 
opportunity allotted to him. 

In reality, the air was roaring with his name. It 
seemed to Buddie, though, that he was moving for- 
ward in a soundless vacuum. He had heard Father 
Gibson’s voice, coming to him seemingly from some- 
where near the Antarctic Circle, and saying, — 

“Your chance, Angell. I count on you to make 
good.” 

That was the only thing that had come inside the 
daze which had fallen on him when, after hearing 
himself summoned to the field, be b^ld stopped beside 


THE GAME 


111 


Porter, limp, blue around the mouth, carried in a 
dangling festoon of legs and arms across the side- 
lines. In that minute, Buddie had known his chance 
for generous pity. Porter ! Down and out, just 
at the finish ! His brilliant play left, broken short 
in two, left for another boy to finish and, if he were 
mean enough, to take the credit ! 

He snatched at the hand which trailed along the 
grass. 

“Porter, it’s a beastly shame ! But it’s your 
game, whatever comes,” he said. 

From the growing impatience of the shouts, he 
realized that, no matter whose the credit, whose the 
blame. Porter’s chance was ended and his own had 
come. And so, walking stiffly as a jointed doll, 
hearing nothing, seeing scarcely more, Buddie 
Angell came out across the field. 

Five minutes more to play. 

For four of them, the game hung in the balance, 
now swaying a bit this way and now that. 

And then ? 

Lawrenceville had the ball, and was charging 
down the field, passing, coaxing, dodging, passing: 
Lawrenceville, strong as iron and fresh as at the start. 
Facing them, and knocked helter-skelter by their 
onslaught were the boys of the home team, winded, 
plucky to the marrow of their bones, but helpless as 
babies against the weight of the advancing line. 

Buddie, in the general mix-up, found himself close 
to the final and inevitable clash. True to the habit 
born of months of intimacy, he cast an appealing 
look at Theo. And Theo, quick as a monkey and 
almost as resourceful, without an instant’s hesitation, 


112 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


flung himself down on the ground exactly in the path 
of the owner of the ball. When he picked himself up 
again from underneath one hundred and sixty pounds 
of lusty Lawrenceville, his own captain had the ball 
and was passing it to Buddie. 

And Buddie never hesitated, never paused to take 
a fresh grip on his resolution. There was no time 
for that ; there were no minutes ; the game had only 
seconds more to live. Instinctively he poised the 
ball in his two hands before him, then sent it flying 
out and out and up and up, over the astounded heads 
of Lawrenceville, over the extra yards of gridiron 
stretching out behind them, and then, cleanly and 
fairly, between the goal posts, far beyond. 

And the game died in that instant. Time was up, 
and the score a tie. 

When Buddie at last succeeded in wriggling his 
way out of the tornado of cheers and the tempest of 
hugging arms which had swept down upon him, he 
found that he was standing face to face with Madge. 
Her eyes gleaming, her hat askew and her gloves in 
ribbons : these took away the need for her to make 
much verbal comment. And, as for Buddie, — 

“Hard luck for Porter !” he said, with perfect hon- 
esty. “After all, you see, it was his game.” 


CHAPTER TEN 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 

1\TEXT day, though, as a matter of course, he was 
cross enough to make up for his heroics of the 
day before. Moreover, it was Sunday, the one day of 
all the week when Buddie’s nerves were never very 
steady. Getting up seemed an extra burden, that 
morning, and church an endless function. Buddie 
shortened it, as best he might, by trying to imagine 
the good old missionary bishop kicking goals in his 
Sunday petticoats, and then by drifting off into 
vague wonderings whether any bishop ever really 
had been a boy. 

At luncheon, he had a skirmish with Tom. Daddy 
was away and, as always happened in Daddy’s 
absence. Miss Myles presided. She felt the honour 
keenly, felt still more keenly the need of assuming 
extra dignity for the occasion, and of giving the 
boys much pleasant talk which should be at once 
amusing and instructive. Now and then, it did 
amuse Buddie, though not exactly in the way Miss 
Myles intended. To-day, for some unknown reason, 
it fretted him, and made him long to throw his 
baked potato at her, — hard. Instead, he stepped 
on Tom’s toe, underneath the table, to call his 
friend’s attention to the state of things. But Tom 
had reasons of his own for not being interested in 
113 


114 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Miss Myles, that day. Moreover, he had put on 
new shoes, and they were tight in the toes. As 
result, he launched a kick at Buddie’s ankles, and 
the kick struck on the ankle bone. 

“Let me alone !” Buddie ordered, with his mouth 
full. 

“Let me alone, yourself!” Tom retorted. 

Miss Myles looked up from her plate, looked from 
one boy to the other, and saw that both boys were 
very red. 

“Oh, boys !” she said gently, persuasively. 

“Hh?” Buddie queried briefly; but mutiny lay 
in the briefness. 

Miss Myles had her own notions about the proper 
way to deal with mutiny. 

“What are you two dear boys doing to each 
other ? ” she inquired. And then she added, with a 
careful smile, “Sunday, too?” 

Buddie swiftly became literal. 

“Miss Myles, are your legs any tougher, Sundays, 
than they are, week days ?” 

“Oh, Buddie !” Miss Myles remonstrated. 

Buddie persisted. 

“Well, are they ?” 

“I — er — never noticed.” 

Buddie attacked his plate ferociously. 

“Well, I have, then,” he said, above the irate 
clatterings of his knife and fork; “and, as far as I 
can discover, Sunday doesn’t make any great amount 
of difference. My legs are my legs, any old time, 
and I can just tell Chub that I don’t propose to have 
him wipe his new boots on them, Sundays or any 
other day.” 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 115 


Tom promptly resented the insult to his marks- 
manship and force. 

“I did not !” he said. 

“What did you do, then?” Buddie demanded. 

“I kicked you. What’s more, I hope I hurt.” 

“Oh, Thomas!” Needless to say, it was Miss 
Myles who spoke. 

“Don’t care! He stepped on my toes and hurt 
me.” 

“Baby !” Buddie said. And then, “That’s no 
reason you should wipe your boots — ” 

“I kicked him,” Tom asserted to Miss Myles, and 
there was pride in the assertion. “I kicked him 
good and hard.” 

“Hard! Hh ! Pussy-paws!” Buddie said scorn- 
fully. “You didn’t hit straight, even. Call that 
a kick ?” 

“Then what are you howling about?” Tom de- 
manded, and he felt that the demand scored one for 
him. 

Not at all, however, for, — 

“Your bad manners,” Buddie told him com- 
posedly. 

“My manners are as good as yours.” 

“Boys ! Boys ! ” 

“They are not. I don’t take the time when 
Daddy is away; I don’t take advantage of Miss 
Myles’s incompe — ” 

“Boys ! Boys ! ” 

Buddie turned to face her. He was smiling 
blandly ; but Miss Myles had a distinct notion that 
the smile was only skin deep. 

“Yes, ma’am?” he queried, and the suspicion of 


116 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


an R, in the ma^am routed Miss Myles utterly, re- 
ducing her to silence and to pottering with her hair- 
pins. 

The skirmish had been of the slightest, and for no 
real cause. However, it did not make the boys, 
once luncheon was over, feel any great desire for 
each other’s society. Accordingly, they went their 
ways: Tom to grind out his weekly letter to his 
father, and Buddie to a serious-looking book which 
concerned electric attachments within the power of 
any amateur to adjust to any house. However, his 
questionings whether Daddy would prefer an electric 
hatbrush, or a motor for his shaving apparatus, 
questionings born of the open page before him, 
vanished behind other questionings that had to do 
with the game of the day before, and especially with 
Porter. Just how badly was he hurt, after all ? 
And would a hurt be likely to hurt as much, when 
the winning of it also won much glory ? 

^ ^rEbenezer appeared to think it would, if one might 
judge from the sighings and the groans which punctu- 
ated his after-luncheon nap. In fact, Buddie de- 
cided it was the complaints of Ebenezer which 
shattered his attention and made it so hard to follow 
the diagram-things that sprinkled the pages of his 
book. He rebuked Ebenezer, waking him up and 
speaking to him sharply. However, Ebenezer knew 
his master too well to be alarmed by his rebukes. 
He merely opened one drowsy eye and then the 
other, drew a hairy fist across his brows in token of 
apology, and straightened himself out more com- 
fortably upon his side. This was the time for sleep, 
Ebenezer argued in his grizzley, shaggy head. Later, 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 117 


he would arise, and listen to Buddie’s comments on 
his manners. And forthwith he drifted off into an- 
other part of dreamland, a place which he rendered 
harmonious with gurglings and with many snores. 

Buddie, meantime, returned to his charts. To- 
day, they seemed to him intricate, almost beyond his 
comprehension. And the room was stuffy, and Miss 
Myles a bore, and Tom a beast. Moreover, Ebene- 
zer, his best and most loyal and most congenial of 
friends, was causing the windows to rattle in their 
casings by reason of his long-drawn and resound- 
ing snores. 

“ Wake up ! ” he said shortly. “Ebenezer ! Puppy ! 
Wake up !” 

And Ebenezer waked. Adoring his young master, 
he had learned to know Buddie’s every accent. 
Buddie’s voice had cut across his dreams ; Ebenezer 
waked, and understood that his master was bored 
and cross — not at him, though. Three years of 
daily intimacy had taught Ebenezer that his master 
never, never could be cross at him, had taught him 
that his master, raging at certain humans, or just at 
things in general, yet always interrupted even his 
worst ragings long enough to lay a caressing hand on 
Ebenezer’s shaggy and inquiring head, lifted to dis- 
cover the secret of the storm. And Ebenezer also 
had learned the chief lesson of it all : that, when 
Buddie really spoke to him in grave rebuke, it was 
his place to listen and obey. On the rare occasions 
when he had been deaf and disobedient, bad things 
had come to him, not by way of Buddie, but out of his 
own failure in obedience. There had been the time 
he had persisted in running after the motor car, for 


118 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


instance. Ebenezer’s wise gray head never could 
forget the agonies that had followed, agonies centring 
in an injured paw. Nor, on the other hand, did 
Buddie ever forget that morning, forget how Ebene- 
zer, whimpering only softly, faintly, had lifted his 
hot muzzle to lick away the tears that ran down his 
master’s face. There had been other hours, besides, 
hours when the two of them, boy and dog, had ex- 
changed confidences, and learned each to know and 
trust the reasonableness of the other. That was why, 
even in the thickest of his dreams, Ebenezer was per- 
fectly aware from Buddie’s voice that Buddie now 
was quite in earnest. 

He rose up, huge and hairy and clumsy as a bear, 
a vast, unwieldy square of grizzled fur, showing 
neither eyes nor ears nor any tail to speak of, and 
only giving evidence which end of him was which by 
one dangling oval badge of pink, his tongue. He 
rose, stretched himself; then, at the other end of 
him from the tongue, the lock of hair jutting from 
the upper corner of his outline began to twitch 
swiftly to and fro ; and, with this apology for a tail- 
wagging, Ebenezer marched across to his young 
master, reared his clumsy self on end, rested two 
huge, hairy paws on Buddie’s shoulders, and did his 
best to wriggle his caressing tongue between his 
master’s neck and the high, close Sunday collar. 

Plainly as words, Ebenezer was demanding, — 

“What’s gone wrong ?” 

From the length of time that the square gray 
muzzle was clasped in Buddie’s hands, it appeared 
that much had gone wrong, much, and in many ways. 
When at last Ebenezer was allowed to drop back 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 119 


again upon all fours, he was in full possession of the 
facts, to judge by the restored serenity of Buddie’s 
countenance. And then, — 

“Come along, Ebenezer,” Buddie ordered. 
“There’s nothing doing here. Let’s go and take 
some walks.” And, a minute afterwards, the front 
stairs were jarring under Ebenezer’s headlong descent 
to the front door. 

Out in the street, Buddie hesitated. He had just 
a minute of feeling rather like a cad, because he had 
not asked Tom to come, too. Then his common 
sense returned to him. He and Tom both were a 
little off their tempers, after the excitement of the 
day before. There had been a difference of opinion, 
while they had been dressing ; in church, there had 
been a disagreement as to which of them should use 
the little red* hymnal with the tunes ; there had been 
the skirmish during luncheon. All in all, Buddie 
felt it would be better for them to go their separate 
ways, until such time as one or both of them decided 
to be meek. Buddie, his fists in his pockets, sighed 
heavily. Was it like this with a real brother, he 
wondered ; or did blood make all the difference ? 
Chubbie was all right enough ; but Buddie had hours 
when he felt himself a good deal more related to 
Ebenezer than he did to Chubbie Neal. It would be 
good to have an actual brother, who understood 
things, and cared, as Ebenezer did, and, moreover, 
understanding and caring, could sit down and cross 
his legs and talk things over. Chubbie never really 
cared much about his kind of things, and — 

Nobody ever has known why the average healthy 
boy is sure to work out of a mood of vague discontent, 


120 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


by way of a sudden spurt of sanctity. With a jerk, 
Buddie cast out Chubbie from his mind, and went 
back to thinking about Porter. Porter had played 
up well, in the end. Whatever his faults, he had 
made good. All the fellows, the game over, were 
admitting it. Moreover, they admitted that, whether 
they liked him or not, they had got to take him in, 
even to take him into Alpha Omicron Pi, the Holiest 
of Holies of the school. One couldn’t go on cutting 
a fellow who had made the showing he did; it 
wouldn’t speak well for the solidness of the school 
spirit. It was the general verdict that he must be 
taken in. Once in, he could be left to walk alone; 
it was the taking in that counted. 

In the time of it, Buddie had assented to the general 
verdict. Now, strolling along the street, his fists 
in his pockets and Ebenezer plodding along beside 
him, now Buddie began to doubt. If a fellow had 
got to walk alone, as Porter really would have to do, 
wouldn’t it be more agreeable to walk along the 
edge of things, unnoticed, instead of tramping 
through the middle of them, with everybody’s eye on 
you to see how you enjoyed it ? And Porter would 
have to walk alone. Everybody would be decent to 
him; but people don’t choose chums just for their 
kicking — 

By Jove ! 

A sudden idea had struck Buddie. Whistling 
sharply to Ebenezer, he turned the next corner and 
walked swiftly northward. It would be decent to go 
to Porter’s house, and ask how he was getting on. 
Somebody ought to do it, for the sake of the school ; 
and Buddie had gloomy suspicions concerning the 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 121 


manners of his mates. Besides, he had come into 
Porter’s place as substitute. All in all, it was 
rather up to him. 

At Porter’s door, he was conscious of a distinct 
shock. To be sure. Porter had been carried from 
the field, limp and dangley and very white. How- 
ever, with boyish optimism born of their final 
rally, his mates had settled to the belief that it was 
a trivial something which they termed a knock- 
out, and they had dismissed the matter from their 
minds without further question. It was the game 
that counted in discussion, not the man carried from 
the field before the game was played out to the finish. 

But the maid at the door looked solemn, and spoke 
in a hushed voice that quite terrified Buddie. The 
young master was asleep now. He had had a bad 
night. Of all the brutal games ! And the doctor 
had said he would be in his room for a long time. 

“What’s the matter with him?” Buddie cut in 
bluntly. 

“Matter enough for all of us. His leg is broke.” 
The maid plainly regarded Buddie as the chief cause 
of the breakage. 

“Oh ! ” Buddie said blankly. And then, “Come 
along, Ebenezer,” he added, and went down the 
steps without another word. 

The maid stared after him. 

“Well, of all the heartless — ! ” she was saying, 
as she shut the door. 

But that was not fair to Buddie. The surprise of 
it had sickened him ; he preferred not to stay, even 
to express his sympathy. He must think it over; 
it might alter things a little. 


122 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


His head bent, his fists in his pockets and his lips 
shaped to a whistle that, for some reason, would not 
come, Buddie went along the street and struck in 
across the Park. Horrid for Porter ! In a way, 
too, horrid for the school ! It was not good for any 
school to have a boy hurt on any of the teams. 
There were always people to cry out about the brutal 
sports, and try to put a stop to them, people who 
caught at the mere fact, without pausing to find 
out any of the details, either of the sport itself, or of 
the cause of the particular accident. Besides, it 
would be horrid for the school, because now, willy- 
nilly, it must take Porter to its heart and make a 
hero of him. It was the only thing to do, in common 
decency ; Porter had broken his leg, trying to hold 
down the opposing score in the most important game 
of the season. In a way, he was a hero. 

The next minute, Buddie’s common sense arose 
again. Porter was no more a hero than he had been, 
at the start of the game. A dozen broken legs 
couldn’t make him into one; it was just the stuff, 
hidden somewhere away down inside him, that had 
made him play up well. The stuff was there, though. 
It was somebody’s business to dig it up, and spread 
it out for a general inspection. Whose — ? 

Buddie lifted his eyes abruptly, his ponderings 
scattered to the four winds of heaven. With a joyous 
yowl of greeting, Ebenezer had gone shooting off 
across a bit of open lawn and vanished in the shrub- 
bery. Buddie, aroused by the yowl, had lifted up his 
eyes just in season to catch a glimpse of the waving 
fringe of his departing heels. 

“Ebenezer ! Come back ! ” he ordered. 


EBENEZER MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 123 


It seemed impossible that anybody or anything 
between Bronx and Battery could be deaf to Buddie’s 
order; but Ebenezer was unheeding in his joy. 
The fringe vanished between two spruces, and the 
feathery boughs swung to behind it. 

Buddie was always nervous, where Ebenezer was 
concerned. He had an abiding fear lest Ebenezer 
would be run over and mangled, or else stolen. Now, 
Ebenezer vanished, Buddie went tearing after him in 
hot pursuit. 

He was not so quick in passing the thicket, how- 
ever. Spruce boughs grow closest above the level 
of Ebenezer’s back ; and, moreover, Ebenezer’s 
person was protected by a thicker coat than the one 
Buddie wore, that Sunday. Accordingly, there was 
an interval of kicking and thrashing, before Buddie 
came out on the other side of the thick green screen. 
There he halted for a minute, totally aghast. Eben- 
ezer had returned to his old specialty, that of trap- 
ping people, unawares. 

Fallen backward, bench and all, and quite at the 
mercy of Ebenezer who, as was plainly evident, had 
upset him, fallen backward and clinging hard to the 
bench rail to keep himself from being utterly de- 
molished, was a tall man with grizzled hair. Above 
him stood Ebenezer, uttering little yelps of satisfac- 
tion, and, between the yelps, printing sloppy, dabby 
kisses on every available spot of his victim’s face. 
Ebenezer’s hind feet were on the man’s knees ; 
Ebenezer’s forefeet were on the man’s shoulders; 
Ebenezer’s hairy muzzle completely covered all of 
the man’s face which was left unprotected by the 
man’s uplifted hand. And, for all practical purposes 


124 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


concerned with self-protection, the man might as 
well have been in the throes of conflict with a mad 
elephant as in the embraces of the ecstatic Ebenezer. 
Buddie’s heart stood still within him at the sight. 

“Ebenezer ! ” he said. 

' Ebenezer heard. Indeed, he could not well help 
it. For just one instant, he paused in his caresses. 

“Ebenezer ! ” Buddie repeated, and the thicket 
jarred. 

Ebenezer heard again. Hearing, he judged that 
the hour had come for him to desist. First, though, 
he made up his mind to snatch one final, satisfactory 
kiss. To that end, he lifted his paw and tried to 
brush away the protecting hand . Instead, he brushed 
away the excellent felt hat which fell upon the 
grass, exposing to Buddie’s view the wearer’s head. 

An instant afterwards, an astounded Ebenezer 
felt himself jerked backwards, to make way for his 
excited master, who plunged headlong on their com- 
mon victim, shouting, — 

“Mr. Kent ! Oh, Mr. Kent ! When ever did 
you get home ? ” 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 

E BENEZER quieted, albeit not without some 
violent gymnastics on the part of his master, 
Buddie returned to his question. To be sure, Mr. 
Kent might have answered it, a dozen times over, 
for Ebenezer’s remarks prevented anybody else from 
being heard. At last, though, — 

“Really, when did you get back, Mr. Kent?’’ 
“This morning, early.” 

“On the — ?” Buddie made a dive for the excel- 
lent gray hat, and fell to dusting it with anxious care. 
Mauretania, We landed at eight.” 

“Had a good time ?” 

“Wonderful.” 

“And your leg?” Buddie’s voice took on an 
anxious tone. 

“Sound as a nut.” 

“Sure?” Relief was mingling with anxiety. 

The artist dropped into boy vernacular. 

“Certain sure.” And then he added, “I can do 
my ten miles now, as well as ever.” 

Then Buddie put a question which, to one looking 
at the tall artist for the first time, seemed a bit 
inexplicable. 

“And the backwards handsprings ?” 

“I’ve not tried them yet; there wasn’t any place 
in Paris. But they’ll come. I can’t realize now 

125 


126 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


that I ever fell down a ravine, one foggy day, and 
almost — ” 

But Buddie interrupted. 

“ Shut up ! he said, with a harshness which yet 
somehow was not lacking in respect. “Don’t talk 
about it. I want to forget. Besides,” he chuckled 
suddenly; “when you come to talk of hairbreadth 
escapes, I’ve had my share of them, myself.” 

“Another train wreck ?” 

Buddie flashed on him one look of boyish mockery. 

“At least, I didn’t faint away, kerplunk,” he said. 

But David Kent had not even the saving grace to 
blush. Much chaflSng can take the sting out of 
almost any hurt ; and, months before, he and Buddie 
had come to the sensible decision to laugh at a curious 
weakness in the artist which, earlier, he always had 
regarded as a proper cause for shame. Therefore, — 

“Because you hadn’t the wisdom to follow a good 
example,” he retorted. “But what was it, this 
time ?” 

“A sinking ship in a frothy sea,” Buddie told him 
magnificently. 

“Not really?” 

“Yes.” And Buddie went over the main items 
of this, his second serious accident within the year. 

“Buddie !” And then, “Buddie, you were born 
and protected, just in order to be hanged,” the 
artist made cheery prediction. 

“I’ll be hanged if—” 

“Very likely. But where were you going, when 
Ebenezer descended on me ?” 

Buddie smiled up at his tall friend, with perfect 
trust in the attractiveness of his own society. 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 


127 


‘‘That just depends on you. Where were you 
bound, Mr. Kent 

“To your house. At least, I was.” 

“To see Daddy?” Buddie’s voice went up, an 
octave and a half. 

“Yes — and you.” 

This time, the response came in a little, cackling 
whoop of rapture. 

“Honest ? Come along ! ” 

David Kent laughed. 

“I will not run, Buddie. It wouldn’t be proper, 
at my age, and in the Park on Sunday. Besides, I’ve 
lots of things to ask you, as we go along.” 

Buddie cast an anxious glance down at the nearer 
of the two long legs. 

“Sure — ?” he was beginning. 

The laugh came again. Buddie was funny, in his 
attitude of elderly protection. And yet, Kent ad- 
mitted to himself, it was rather good to be protected, 
though only by a youngster whose scalp lock reached 
scarcely to his elbow. 

“Sound as ever I was, Buddie. I only carry a 
stick because it is the fashion. By the middle of the 
winter, I’ll be hard at it in my gymnasium, and as 
wiry as ever. It takes a little time, you know ; but 
I have rushed on splendidly, thanks to your father. 
They told me in Paris — I had a little strain there, and 
went to get myself looked over — that not one man 
in an hundred could have brought me through, 
without so much as a stiff joint.” 

“’Course not,” Buddie said serenely. And then 
he added, “Jiminy, but I was scared, when I saw 
Ebenezer on top of you ! I thought he’d gone mad.” 


128 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


The artist stooped to pat the frowsy budget of 
gray hair, now waddling contentedly between him- 
self and Buddie. 

‘‘He wanted to be the first one of the family to 
welcome me,” he said. Then, as he straightened up 
again, “How goes it, Buddie?” he asked compre- 
hensively. 

“Fine.” 

“Daddy all right?” 

“Yes.” 

“What have you been doing ?” 

Buddie’s mind ran over his personal record since 
the noon when, standing on the pier-head, he had 
waved a last salute at the Adriatic, just swinging 
out into the stream. He summed up the record 
tersely. 

“Punted a goal from halfway down the field,” he 
answered. 

“When?” The artist’s accent showed that he 
understood the greatness of the deed. 

“Yesterday. We played Lawrenceville. At 
least,” Buddie fiushed, as he made the correction; 
“I was substitute on the team.” 

“Substitute ? How was that ?” 

Buddie’s flush deepened. 

“It just was; that’s all,” he said uneasily. 

Kent looked down at him with some curiosity. 
Boyhood would be the last thing to die in the tall 
artist. He knew that a history lay behind the 
words ; knew it would all be told to him, some day. 
He also knew, though, that boyish confidence, to be 
worth while, must come of itself, not be hunted 
down and dragged out to the light of day. And so, — 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 


129 


“But you came in at the finish ?” he asked. 

Buddie nodded. 

“The other fellow took after you. He’s laid up in 
plaster.” 

“His leg?” 

“Yes. Broken.” 

“Sorry. It hurts. Besides, I’m afraid he may 
not have such good care as I did.” Then Kent 
came back to his main theme. “You punted a 
goal? That’s good, sharp work. What was the 
score ?” 

“We finished on a tie,” Buddie told him, ignoring 
the way the tie was won. 

Kent knew, of course. Besides, he had not 
studied Buddie for nothing, during all those summer 
weeks that they had spent together in the Rocky 
Mountain camp. He knew what Buddie was think- 
ing, almost as much from the things he did not say 
as from the things he did. Now a dozen questions 
extracted the whole story of the game, and gave to 
Kent the chance for an honest word of congratula- 
tion. Then, — 

“ How is Chubbie Neal ? ” Kent asked. 

“All right.” 

Again Kent studied the face beside him keenly. 
He could do it with perfect safety, for Buddie’s eyes 
were bent upon the road before him. A new note 
had come into the terseness of Buddie’s reply, a note 
that somehow matched the slight stiffening of the 
expressive lips. 

“He’s at your house ?” 

“Of course.” 

“Where is he now?” 


130 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Home. Reading.” Buddie cut his information 
into two crispy sentences. 

“Not out with you.” The artist’s accent con- 
trived to give meaning to a perfectly plain statement 
of a perfectly plain fact. 

“No.” 

Then they walked on for a little, without speaking. 

“How is the combination working out.^” Kent 
asked at length. 

His eyes were on Buddie, as he put the ques- 
tion. He saw the lips straighten, the chin stiffen. 
Then — 

“It isn’t,” Buddie said. 

“Why not?” 

Later, and in precisely the same words and the 
same order, David Kent repeated his questionings 
to Daddy. Doing it, he felt sure he was well inside 
his rights, for the intimacy between the two men was 
an unusual one. Travelling westward on the same 
train, early that last June, the shock and confusion 
following an accident had changed a casual acquaint- 
ance into something very like a friendship. The 
friendship had gone on growing, fed by the chance 
which had brought them into the same small moun- 
tain town to spend the summer ; but it was not until 
weeks had passed and a camping trip into the heart 
of the wilderness had ended in tragedy for David 
Kent that the two men, out of the hours which 
followed, had learned all that the other meant to 
each. 

Then they had come East together, the Angells to 
New York, Kent to go to Paris for the annual tonic he 
always gave to his ideals. Since then, there had 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 


131 


been letters, of course; but letters are rather useless 
things, compared to talk. 

As a matter of course, Kent had stayed on to 
dinner. Later, in spite of the remonstrances of his 
young son. Daddy took away the guest to smoke 
and gossip in the inner office which, of a Sunday 
night, was always barred to visitors entering by the 
office door. It was the one time in all the week when 
the doctor let himself be just a human man, and he 
earned it well. To-night, Kent was full of questions ; 
but the doctor put him off at first, and with decision. 

“No. It will be your turn, afterwards,” he said 
crisply. “First of all — ” And he put his guest 
through a catechism that had to do with joints and 
tendons and the like ; then, satisfied on that score, 
with canvases and oils and facts about the foreign 
galleries, facts which Kent gave out briefly and with 
evident reluctance. 

At last, he balked. 

“My turn, Angell,” he protested. “You’re a 
long way worse than the Third Degree ; do stop your 
questions and let me talk. My leg is all right, I tell 
you, and art is booming. That’s enough for you. 
I’m not going to turn your head by telling you what 
the Paris chaps said about your carpentry on my 
knee-joint. Now tell me about yourself — only I 
don’t need to ask much.” 

The doctor nodded. 

“Sound in wind and limb, thank God !” he said. 

“And Buddie ?” 

“Another.” 

“That’s good news.” Kent nodded. “What is 
more, he looks it. He’s steady on his legs, and his 


132 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


eyes are clean. Angell, you’ve more than a little to 
be thankful for.” 

“As I am well aware,” the doctor assented gravely. 

The gravity led them into a short silence. Kent 
broke it with a question, the question he already had 
asked Buddie, the question which the doctor had 
been dreading from the start. 

“How is your combination working out ?” 

The doctor bent forward and prodded at the fire. 

“Not just as I planned it,” he said slowly, be- 
tween prods. 

Kent gave him a short, shrewd glance. Months 
ago, he had known the time would come for some 
such answer. The glance was short. Then Kent 
withdrew his eyes. 

“What’s the trouble ?” 

“Blamed if I know!” the doctor answered, 
with the turbulent despair of his unforgotten boy- 
hood. 

“Tandem, and not a team?” Kent queried 
shrewdly, while he tried his best not to smile at 
the phrasing of the doctor’s answer. 

“Precisely.” 

“Which leads?” 

“Turn about. It’s not the leadership that makes 
the trouble ; it’s the difference in running.” 

Kent nodded. 

“You mean?” 

A long line of saddle-trained grandfathers spoke 
in the doctor’s reply. 

“One trots, and breaks a little now and then. 
The other paces.” 

“Yes,” Kent assented. “What else did you 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 


133 


expect, after watching the two of them, all summer 
long ?” 

The doctor had an unexpected minute of feeling 
like a bad small boy kept in at recess. However, 
unlike the usual small boy, he saw justice in rebuke. 

“I thought, once they were back in the city — ” 
he was beginning. 

Kent laughed, and shook his head. 

“In other words, Angell, you put the same harness 
on them and fastened them together to go their 
gait. If that is all you know of horses, no wonder 
you took to an automobile. But, dropping any 
allegory, what’s the matter ?” 

The doctor settled back into his chair. 

“For a fact, Kent, I don’t know,” he said. 

“Do they fight 

“Not often. Never, really.” 

“Do they go their way ?” 

“Not exactly. That is, they go in the same 
direction and at about the same time. Buddie 
gets there. Chubbie stalls on the way.” 

“And?” There was question in Kent’s single 
word. 

“And it never seems to occur to Buddie to go 
back and look for him.” 

“Wings not fully grown yet,” the artist com- 
mented. “He’s young, though.” 

But Daddy kept on with his explanation ; slowly, 
though, as if he were thinking it out into words 
for the first time. 

“And Chubbie never tries to hurry a little, for 
the sake of catching up. He just plods on, with- 
out looking at Buddie’s disappearing coat-tails.” 


134 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


‘‘Hm!” Kent said shortly. “And yet, he isn’t 
stupid.” 

The doctor’s voice had a ring of impatience. 

“Hang it all, Kent, he isn’t anything it isn’t 
nice to be. That’s the deadly thing about him. 
If he only had a fault or two for us to work on, 
there would be any amount more chance for him 
in the long run. There couldn’t be a better boy 
about the house than he is, a nicer guest, polite 
and biddable. He hasn’t a vice to his name, except 
an inborn horror of fresh air, and I am curing him 
of that in a hurry.” 

Kent’s eyes twinkled. He knew the doctor’s 
hobby, and he shared it. None the less, he had an 
instant of pity for the ventilated Thomas. 

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed, with fervour. 

The doctor swept ahead, heedless of the laugh 
in his friend’s tone. 

“But I’ll be hanged if I wouldn’t rather manage 
Buddie in a tantrum than handle the eternal peace 
and politeness of a boy like Chubbie. Your grip 
slides off from Chub like water from a greased pig; 
Buddie you can hang on to, and pull him back 
with a jerk, when you see him going wrong.” 

“Yes.” Kent smoked in silence for a minute. 
“However, Angell, does it ever occur to you that 
you are Buddie’s father ?” 

“Naturally.” 

“Don’t be stiff, man. I don’t say it to be dis- 
agreeable. It’s only that it is a fact worth remem- 
bering in this present mess.” 

“Mess The doctor looked startled. 

“Yes, mess. In a rash moment, you took a 


CONCERNING CHUBBIE 


135 


white elephant, and now you find he doesn’t fit 
into the corner of your cage where you had planned 
to put him. Because he doesn’t fit, you think 
he isn’t the proper shape. You ought to have 
realized at the start that Providence has equipped 
him with a dangley tail-thing at the wrong end, 
has given him eyes that twinkle and see things 
without telling you what is going on inside the 
head they’re on. In other words, you took him, 
without knowing much about him, beyond the 
fact that he was an able-bodied boy not far from 
Buddie’s age. You reckoned it would be good 
for Buddie to have another boy inside the house. 
You didn’t so much care about the other boy.” 

“But—” 

“Of course, you’re wonderfully good to him,” 
Kent interrupted. “Of course, you are doing a 
lot for him, giving him a grand chance. But the 
trouble lies in the fact that Buddie is your own 
boy, and Chub isn’t. Not that you’re partial. 
If anything, you probably stand back of Chubbie, 
nine times out of every ten. But you know Buddie 
through and through, sins and all, and you can 
count on him, every time. Chubbie is still an un- 
known quantity, just as much unknown as he was, 
the night you started west, last summer.” 

To each of Kent’s last phrases, the doctor had 
been beating out an accompaniment upon the 
coals. Now he looked up. 

“You’re right, Kent. You generally are. In 
fact, it’s a mystery to me how a mere bachelor 
understands so much of things. Well, what’s to 
be done?” 


136 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Mining,” Kent said shortly. “You’ve got to 
strike the ore inside that boy. You can’t expect 
to dig much out of him, until you find out just what 
sort of stuff it is, and where.” 

“You think there’s something, then?” 

“I’m sure of it. That head wasn’t built up out 
of nothing; those lips don’t change expression, 
without something back of them. Angell,” Kent 
rose, and held out his hand; “don’t think I’m a 
beast, or meddlesome. I only want to help you 
out. You took the boy on your hands for all winter. 
You don’t want to give him up; neither do you 
want to waste the whole winter’s work on him by 
poking and prodding at him quite at random. Let 
me help. Chub isn’t Buddie ; he never, never 
will be. However, he has good stuff inside him, 
stuff of some kind or other. Every boy has, is 
bound to. All is, we’ve got to get at it, and get 
it out.” 

“How?” 

For all his bravery, Kent shook his head. 

“I’ll have to think it over,” he said. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


PORTER 

A fter all, Kent did not think it over much, not 
from careless lack of interest, but just because 
chance left him no time. Next afternoon, to his 
astonishment, he found himself without warning well 
inside of Chubbie’s personality. 

“My mother used to, you see,” Chubbie was 
explaining. “I suppose it comes natural to me, 
like the shape of my nose, or the colour of my hair. 
Do you honestly think it’s not too silly ?” 

It was a dog’s-eared leaf of paper in David Kent’s 
right hand. At Chubbie’s question, Kent’s eyes 
swept over it again. 

“Not a bit silly. Chub,” he said, and his accent 
of hearty respect was wonderfully soothing to the 
boy’s chronic self-distrust. “It’s young, of course; 
you’ll do any amount better by and by. Silly it 
isn’t, though. Instead, it’s really good.” 

The boy’s eyes searched his face. Their straight, 
sharp glance pinned him to the truth, with the 
single question, — 

“On your honour 

Kent’s hand came out in witness. 

“As I paint pictures,” he said; and Chubbie 
knew by instinct that no mortal oath could be 
more binding. 


137 


138 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


He drew a deep breath which held in its windy 
heart an accent very like relief. 

“I’m glad,” he said simply. “It gives me some- 
thing to do.” 

“To do?” David Kent’s eyes widened. Boys, 
as he knew them, were not given to the confession 
that they were feeling bored. 

“Yes. Something I like, that is; something 
that I can do by myself.” 

Kent shook his head. 

“Much better be doing things with the other 
fellows. Chub,” he advised. 

Tom ground his toe into a fold of the rug, then 
drew it out and glowered down at the shiny leather 
tip. 

“No good,” he said. 

“Why?” 

Tom’s accent smacked a little of the Pharisee. 

“I can’t see much sense in rushing about, kick- 
ing things and throwing things, all the time.” 

“You certainly did your share of it in camp, 
last summer,” Kent reminded him, with a smile. 

“Yes ; but that was holidays. There was nothing 
else to do.” 

Behind the attentive interest in the artist’s face, 
there lurked a little amusement. He had had 
other things to do, and had done them. A round 
dozen notable pictures of those Rocky Mountains 
had gone with him to Europe, and had stayed there. 
Nevertheless, he had found it worth his while to 
drop work now and then, in order to teach Buddie 
Angell to turn handsprings and to know the proper 
use of a trapeze. He still had a vivid recollection 


PORTER 


139 


of the day he had offered to give a similar train- 
ing to Chubbie Neal. 

“What do you do here?” he queried. “Now 
that you have all sorts of things for choice, I mean ?” 

Again the Pharisee ! 

“I go to school, of course. When I get time, 
I like best to read.” 

“No exercise?” 

“Yes. We have to report at the Field, twice 
every week,” Tom told him grudgingly. 

“That’s not enough.” 

“It is, when I want to read.” 

“Don’t the other boys read, too ?” 

“Not the same way, not right ahead,” Tom 
answered, and the earlier note of patronage in- 
creased yet more. 

It was no especial wonder, though, that David 
Kent looked puzzled. He tried to hide his puzzle- 
ment under a laugh. 

“What do they do? Read backwards?” he 
inquired. 

Tom refused to see any humour in the question. 
He answered it quite literally. 

“No; but they never stick to, until they’ve 
finished. They’re all the time getting up and 
trying to do the things the book is telling about. 
It isn’t the book itself they care for, only for the 
things inside it.” 

And David Kent’s first impulse was to laugh 
again. Then he glanced down at the leaf of paper 
still in his hand. What did anybody read books 
for, anyway ? Or look at pictures ? 

But Chubbie was explaining further. 


140 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“That is,” he said, a good deal as if he were 
stating a grievance; “when Buddie reads a book, 
or Theo, or any of the boys down here, it’s got to 
be about something they can make, or act, or do; 
and, halfway down a page, they chuck the book 
on the floor, and go rushing off to make it, or to 
act it, or to do it.” 

“Yes?” David Kent’s heart was rejoicing at 
the chuck. It was the first hint of boyishness 
which he had seen, that day, in Chubbie. 

“Yes.” Chubbie came to the flattest sort of 
finish. “Well, I don’t.” 

Then he had a sudden shock, for, — 

“Too bad!” the artist commented. 

The talk of a great variety of his elders had im- 
pressed on Tom’s mind that the artist’s comments 
were worth thinking over. 

“Why?” he asked, after an interval of such 
thinking. 

“It’s the things a man does that show the things 
he’s made of,” Kent said crisply. Then abruptly 
he came back to the subject of the leaf of paper in 
his hand. 

“Have you tried much of this sort of thing?” 
he asked. 

“A little. This is the longest, though.” 

“Where are the others ?” 

Tom tried to look vague, and failed. 

“Get them,” Kent ordered. “You might as 
well let me see what they are like.” 

“Oh, but — ” Chubbie had turned a lively 
scarlet. 

Kent laughed. 


PORTER 


141 


“Once on'"a time, Chubbie, I painted a rose-pink 
cow against a royal purple sunset. You might as 
well show me your stuff. We’ve every one of us 
been through the early stages of the same disease.” 

And then he waited, waited while Chubbie rum- 
maged through his pockets and brought out a 
dozen sheets of paper, all of them more or less 
grimy and weak-backed along the folds. 

“I didn’t want Buddie coming on them,” Tom 
added, in explanation of his carrying his treasures 
about concealed upon his person. 

“Why not?” 

“I’d never hear the last of it,” Tom said shame- 
facedly. 

Again the artist gave him a surprise. 

“No. You wouldn’t. Buddie would be the 
first one of all your friends to make a row about it, 
and tell all the other fellows that you were a genius. 
These all ? Very well. I’ll send them back, in 
a day or two. I want to look them over at my 
leisure. I haven’t time now, for I’m due at a tea. 
Tell Dr. Angell — ” And, a minute afterward, 
the door had shut behind him, leaving Tom alone. 

Buddie, meanwhile, had gone again to ask for 
Porter. He was driven to this course of extreme 
devotion, not so much from a wild desire for tidings, 
as because he had been goaded into opposition by 
the prevailing lack of interest manifested in Porter 
by his mates at school. 

At recess, that morning, Buddie had summed up 
the situation with a jerk. 

“Mean trick!” he said. “You’ll whoop for 
him, as long as he is on his legs and doing his best 


142 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


to bring you out of a tight corner. Once you are 
round the corner, though, you leave him lying on 
his back, and forget all about him.” 

“We don’t forget him, Buddie. We mourn his 
untimely loss,” somebody argued flippantly. 

“Don’t be silly!” Buddie ordered. “It hurts 
to break a fellow’s leg.” 

“We didn’t break it. He stubbed his toe.” 

Buddie scored. 

“Exactly. And, because it doesn’t hurt you, 
you think there isn’t any hurting going on, anywhere 
about. My father telephoned to Porter’s doctor, 
though, and Porter’s doctor said it was an un- 
commonly bad break.” And, in spite of his un- 
doubted sympathy, Buddie’s voice held more than 
a ring of pride that his information was of the kind 
known as “inside,” and sensational enough to be 
worth while, besides. 

Boys are not cruel ; neither are they selfish. 
When they seem so, it usually is because, for the 
moment, some nearer and more vital interest has 
blinded them to the proper object of their pity. 
It was so with Porter. On that Monday morning, 
the game itself, taken as a whole, was the theme 
of the discussions, and not one single luckless item 
in that game. The boys agreed that Porter had 
played up well ; that, next to Buddie, he had saved 
the day for them. Then they stopped talking 
about him, and fell to praising Buddie. And 
Buddie rebelled. Porter had played out all but 
the final minutes of the game; he himself had 
won renown, in those final minutes, just by a piece 
of grand good luck. And Porter was down and 


PORTER 


143 


out, at home in bed, while he himself was on hand 
to take all the credit. Buddie’s code of honour 
told him that it wasn’t fair. 

“But aren’t you sorry for Porter, you beast?” 
he asked one boy downrightly. 

And the boy made answer, — 

“Sure ! All the same, we’re jolly glad it isn’t 
you.” 

And that, to Buddie’s extreme disgust, was all 
the satisfaction he could extract from anybody. 

School over, Buddie went in search of Father 
Gibson, chin in air, jaws shut askew. 

“Please, Father Gibson, I want to get out of 
exercise, to-day,” he said. 

“Anything wrong, Buddie ?” 

“Yes. No. Heaps. And nothing I can put 
my finger on, either. It’s only — ” 

“Well ?” Father Gibson’s eyes searched Buddie’s 
face for hints which would point to the source of 
trouble. 

Buddie knew that Father Gibson could be trusted. 
Wherefore he wasted no time in hints. 

“It’s Porter.” 

Father Gibson looked startled. 

“Is he worse, Buddie ? I hadn’t heard.” 

Buddie shook his head impatiently. 

“Not that I know. It’s bad enough, anyhow. 
He’s out, and nobody cares.” 

There was a longish pause. Then Father Gibson 
asked slowly, — 

“Aren’t you a little hard on them, Buddie?” 

Buddie faced him, unflinching. 

“No. I’m not. You wouldn’t say so, if — if 


144 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


you were just one of the boys, and heard things,” 
he said. “Besides, it isn’t Porter’s fault that his 
mother calls him 'pet, and gives him three a week 
for neckties.” 

Years’ experience had made Father Gibson agile 
as a goat in jumping gaps in boyish logic. Now, — 

“How do you know she does, Buddie ?” 

“Madge told me.” 

“Who is Madge?” 

“His cousin.” 

Father Gibson allowed himself the luxury of a 
smile. 

“It strikes me that Madge would much better 
have kept still,” he said. 

Buddie flashed. 

“That’s because you don’t know her, nor about 
it. Father Gibson. She didn’t do it to tell tales 
and make Porter seem a fool; she’s not that sort. 
She told me, just to excuse him for something he 
did — But now maybe I’ve been rude to you. 
Honest, I didn’t mean it, in the least.” 

“That’s all right, Buddie. I understood. And 
never mind the exercise, to-day; you did your 
share, last week. But, about the other boys, give 
them a little time to think things out and to get 
over the excitement of the game, and you’ll find 
that they are just as sorry for Porter as you are.” 

“ Yessir,” Buddie answered meekly, and he turned 
to go away. 

Father Gibson called him back. 

“Oh, Buddie?” 

“Yes?” Buddie’s snub nose reappeared in the 
crack of the closing door. 


PORTER 


145 


“Listen, old man. If I were in your place, I 
wouldn’t tell the other fellows about jpet and the 
neckties.” 

For just one instant, Buddie’s lashes brushed 
his cheek. Then, — 

“Not much !” he said. “I know my little 
playmates a good deal too well to risk it. They’d 
die, laughing. Father Gibson.” And, this time, he 
was really gone. 

Permission asked and granted, then, to omit his 
usual visit to the Field, as soon as school was over, 
that afternoon, Buddie started off towards Porter’s 
house. It was only towards, however. In the 
end, Buddie knew that his conscience would take 
him there, especially when Father Gibson had let 
him off from exercise for that very purpose. And 
yet, Buddie felt himself supremely silly, when he 
thought of going up the steps to Porter’s door, and 
asking news of Porter’s self, when he cared no more 
for Porter than — But did he ? Or didn’t he ? 
The question needed time, before it could be thought 
out. He was still thinking, when the gathering 
dusk drove him to Porter’s door. 

The young master had had a very bad night ; but 
now he was feeling just a little better. He had been 
pleased to know his friend had been to see him, 
and he had ordered that, the first day he was allowed 
to see any visitors, his friend should be sent for. 

Buddie’s moral plumes drooped visibly, as he 
went down the steps. At the foot of the steps, 
he spoke aloud, and sadly. 

“Gee!” he said. “Buddie, old man, you’re 
in for it.” 


146 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Then, fists in pockets, he set his face towards 
home. 

Half way home, he was called out of his reverie 
by a girlish voice which came to him from above 
the purring of a car. 

“Buddie! Buddie! Buddie Angell ! ” 

Of course, it was Madge, and alone in the back 
seat, with Mr. Graeme at the steering wheel. 

“Where have you been ?” she demanded. 

Buddie made shamefaced confession, and Madge 
nodded. 

“Nice of you. Algy cares a lot, and you’re the 
only single boy who has been near the house. My 
aunt told me, and she told me Algy almost cried — ” 

Buddie’s exasperated nerves gave out completely. 

“Bffff!” he scoffed. 

Madge fiew to the defence of the absent Algy. 
Not that she ever had pretended to care much for 
him, but Buddie suspected it was her habit to defend 
the under dog in any crisis. 

“No such thing !” she told Buddie curtly. “He 
was aching all over, and his leg in plaster. You’d 
have cried, yourself, not stopped short at almost.” 
Then, “Don’t be silly,” she ordered him, as she 
read signs of mutiny in his face. “You know I’m 
bound to fight for Algy. I’m Scotch, and he’s a 
cousin. Because I fight for him, though, doesn’t 
mean — ” 

“I don’t care what it means,” Buddie said stub- 
bornly. “I’m as sorry for him as you are. Still, 
that’s no special reason he should cry.” 

Madge changed the subject, not to its betterment, 
however. 


PORTER 


147 


“Where’s Tom?” 

“Home.” 

“What doing?” 

“How should I know?” 

“You might find out.” 

“He wouldn’t tell me, if I asked.” 

“Have you ever tried ?” 

Buddie shrugged his shoulders, after a fashion 
he had learned from Indian Bill. It was as expres- 
sive as it was impolite. 

Madge bottled her feelings, for a minute. Then 
out they came. 

“I am sorry for Tom,” she said severely. 

“Why?” 

“Because I am. Because he’s company, and 
you don’t take any pains to make him have a good 
time.” 

Buddie flushed scarlet. Then he grumbled indis- 
tinctly. Then he mumbled something or other 
about “no time.” 

Madge pounced on him too swiftly to let him 
take back or modify his error. 

“Time? You’ve all the time there is. You’ve 
time enough to fuss with that great woolly dog 
of yours, and time enough to — ” recklessly she 
chose to hold up as a vice the very thing for which, 
five minutes before, she had been praising him ; 
“to go rushing off to ask for Algy, every day.” 

“I’ll be hanged, if I do it again,” Buddie told 
her testily. 

Once more Madge showed the seams in the fabric 
of her girlish logic. 

“Then you’ll be a selfish pig,” she said severely. 


148 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


This time, however, she had overshot her mark. 
Buddie lifted his cap with a courtesy too elaborate 
to be quite sincere. 

“Good afternoon,” he told her. “Then you’d 
better not be wasting any more of your precious 
pearls on me.” 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


Kent’s ugly duckling 

O F course, being Buddie, he apologized. Equally 
of course, Madge forgave him. Both the apol- 
ogy and the forgiveness had to be done swiftly, be- 
cause they took place in the very presence of one of 
the bones of contention. The other bone, meanwhile, 
disdaining Buddie’s suggestion of a walk, had shut 
himself up in his room in the society of a book. 

“Poetry, too,” Buddie had reported to the wait- 
ing Ebenezer, once they were safely in the street 
and so out of hearing; “poetry, with sloppy leather 
covers !” 

Ebenezer barked impatiently. He wished exer- 
cise, not conversation. None the less, Buddie 
continued to converse. 

“Ebenezer, whatever else you do, stick to your 
sense of humour,” he advised the dog, now jumping 
against him in a frenzy of invitation. “It’s more 
useful than legs, any day in the week. Now come 
along, and do your daily duty by dear Algy.” 

It was not until boy and dog had had a prolonged 
race through the Park, though, that the daily duty 
was accomplished. Ebenezer loved the Park; it 
stood to him as the next best thing to country. 
It was possible there to go racing through the bushes, 
to roll, kicking and wallowing, upon the turf, even 
to chase an occasional squirrel across a bit of open 
149 


150 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


lawn. To be sure, this city squirrel was no real 
sport. He always went dashing up the nearest 
tree, to sit on a branch and scold Ebenezer who, 
gripping the trunk with his shaggy fore paws, and 
kicking wildly at the bark with his shaggy hind 
ones, deceived himself into the belief that he was 
climbing. Besides, there were policemen, and police- 
men always took the side of the squirrels and ordered 
Ebenezer to be moving on. 

In spite of all these drawbacks, Buddie and Eben- 
ezer found the Park almost as good as the real 
country. For more than an hour, they went zig- 
zagging back and forth, romping and wrestling and 
rolling like a pair of puppies. Then the yellow 
glow above the housetops warned Buddie that the 
afternoon was nearly ended. He said a word or 
two to explain things to Ebenezer, brushed the 
bits of dry grass and twigs out of Ebenezer’s back 
hair and ran his fingers through his own tousled 
red topknot. Then he hunted through his pockets 
for the cap that ought to be in one of them, found 
it tucked loose inside his coat, and put it on his 
head. His afternoon toilet thus ended, he whistled 
to Ebenezer, and turned out of the Park into the 
yellow sunset. 

At Porter’s door, a shock awaited him. Would 
he come in ? Buddie wrinkled his nose. He had 
grown accustomed, every day or two, to walking 
across the Park and sending in a message by the 
person on duty at Porter’s door. Porter liked it, 
he had heard ; and it gave him all the more chance 
to exercise Ebenezer who, despite his exceeding 
fatness, would gladly have done his fifteen miles 


KENT’S UGLY DUCKLING 


151 


a day. But go inside, and talk to Porter ! Buddie 
had a healthy preference for the society of healthy 
people. 

Now, met by the summons from within, he cast 
about him for some decent way of escape. Ebenezer, 
diving through the open doorway, caught Buddie’s 
attention as a possible excuse. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said; “but I can’t leave 
Ebenezer.” 

The person on duty was too well-trained to sug- 
gest that Ebenezer had solved that difficulty by 
leaving Buddie. Instead, she gazed blankly at 
the hairy bundle who was marching up and down 
the hall, sniffing at angles of the furniture with 
different degrees of interest and approbation. 

“Ebenezer! Come here!” Buddie ordered. 

Ebenezer merely twitched his apology for a tail, 
and continued his inspection, sniffiing at surfaces, 
and poking his blunt muzzle into corners never 
meant to be investigated by stray guests. 

Buddie’s hand smote his own knee, in warning 
to Ebenezer that, next time, it would smite him. 

“Ebenezer! Come right here!” he ordered 
again, and a worried note came uppermost in his 
voice. 

Ebenezer, his circuit of the hall almost finished, 
had halted at the foot of the stairway, and was 
gazing thoughtfully upward, as if trying to deter- 
mine whether there was anything of interest to 
be seen above. The worried note in his master’s 
voice appeared to settle the question beyond doubt. 
Ebenezer had good reasoning powers in his wise 
gray head; he knew that Buddie never took the 


152 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


trouble to forbid uninteresting things. He drew 
his own conclusions and cast hesitation from him. 
At top speed, he went lumbering up the unfamiliar 
staircase; and Ebenezer’s top speed, coupled with 
his size and frowsiness, made his advent on the 
upper levels border closely upon the sensational. 

Porter’s mother had nerves, nerves now not at 
their best by reason of the accident to her beloved 
son. And Porter’s mother not only never had 
kept a dog, herself, nor had she visited shows enough 
to recognize in Ebenezer a beast of pedigree and 
points. And so, when a great gray shape, appar- 
ently escaped from the nearest zoo, came bolting 
up the stairs into her own room and, without a 
pause of indecision, leaped directly into her dainty, 
frilly bed and lay there, panting, a pink tongue 
lolling saucily from between two rows of hard and 
gleaming teeth, and two eyes glistening like beads 
of fire behind a veiling fringe of grizzled tag-locks : 
when all this happened, it was no especial wonder 
that the poor, nervous little lady gave a strangled 
sort of scream and fell in a huddle on the nearest 
chair. 

Later, after the terrified hostess had had lavender 
outside and stimulants within, and after Ebenezer, 
his tongue lolling out farther than ever in proud 
pleasure at finding himself the centre of attention, 
after Ebenezer had been conducted to the dining- 
room and lashed to a chair leg and provided with 
sweet biscuits, Buddie was solemnly led up the stairs 
again to Porter’s room. Not that he cared, now. 
He was too busy strangling his emotions, which 
were by no means all of shame. Ebenezer had 


KENT’S UGLY DUCKLING 


153 


looked funny, stretched out at full length on that 
lacy blue bedspread, and playing peekaboo behind 
his shaggy paw. It was a mercy that he had been 
combed, the last thing before they started for their 
walk. Every separate tag-lock was waving huf- 
fily a different way; and, in spite of the dozen 
dried elm leaves left behind him on the bed, Buddie 
had felt a thrill of pride and satisfaction, as he had 
assisted his pet to descend from his frilly throne. 

At the door of Porter’s room, though, Buddie 
suddenly drew back. He remembered that he was 
going to find Porter fiat on his back in bed; and 
the thought struck him somewhere in the region 
of his stomach. Buddie noted the fact with hasty 
interest. He had not known his heart was located 
just there; and yet it must be his heart that felt 
so qualmy. At least, the books all said it was. 

“Hullo, Porter!” he said politely, from the 
threshold. 

But Porter was long past answering. And Buddie, 
quite aware of the cause of Porter’s mirth, cast 
himself down into a chair beside the bed, and went 
off into a roar of laughter. 

Madge came in, and found them at it. 

“Well, I must say, here’s a pretty state of things I” 
she told them as, with a wriggle and a fiutter of her 
skirts, she settled herself on the edge of the bed. 
“No, Algy ; I’m not going to hit your broken bones. 
You needn’t put on airs; you’re used to me. But 
what have you two bad boys been doing ?” 

“ ’Tisn’t us,” Buddie gasped. “It’s Ebenezer.” 

“I should say it was.” Madge wriggled into a 
more comfortable position ; then, stooping, she 


154 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 

patted down the blanket at her cousin’s back. 
“Comfy, young man? You look it. But what 
has Ebenezer done? The poor lamb is walking 
around the dining-room, dragging his chair after 
him, and the chair is dragging the little pink rug, 
and the little pink rug is dragging a trail of biscuit 
crumbs. And, upstairs, the house smells like a 
hospital, and Judgkyns said ‘Shhhhhhh!’ when 
I looked in at your mother’s door.” 

Buddie’s laugh cut itself off in the middle. 

“Is she — ?” 

“Yes, she is,” Madge told him. “Still, Judgkyns 
says the worst is over. And then I came on here, 
and found you two boys in hysterics. What has 
happened ?” 

Later, the talk settled to every-day matters : 
school gossip. Porter’s present state of imprison- 
ment, Madge’s dancing school, and the like. As it 
went on, Buddie slowly realized that he was watch- 
ing a wholly different Madge from any that he had 
seen before. She teased him, but her teasing was 
gentler; she lectured; but her little lectures had 
lost their sting. Perched there on the edge of her 
cousin’s bed, now and then patting the pillows 
into shape, or tucking down the blankets, she was 
at once the hostess and the nurse, merry, sympa- 
thetic, and full of girlish dignity. Buddie, watch- 
ing, wondered just a little. He had gathered from 
her talk that Madge had never cared too much 
for her cousin; she had just told him that it 
was only the fifth time she had been allowed to 
see him. Now, though, she treated him as if they 
had been the closest sort of chums from babyhood, 


KENT’S UGLY DUCKLING 


155 


as if his broken bone were her pain quite as much 
as his. Buddie, healthy and hard as a bit of pine 
planking, had yet to learn that girls, nice girls, 
not sentimental ones, get that way when anybody, 
whom they know, is suffering. Later, school and 
college done, he was to have a week or two of find- 
ing out the fact for himself, and by way of Madge. 

Not till all the gossip of the school had been ex- 
hausted, not till Buddie’s tact, struggling with his 
truthfulness, had made over certain vague inquiries 
into direct messages from the different boys to Por- 
ter : not till then did Madge allow her cousin to drop 
for an instant from the middle of the conversation. 
Then, — 

“What made you run away from us, the other 
day ?” she demanded. 

The sudden question took Buddie completely by 
surprise. He had the presence of mind, though, to 
seem to search his mind for the day in question. 

“Oh, that,” he answered vaguely. “I didn’t 
run away. I just — ” 

She cut his phrase off short. 

“Were you mad?” 

“ ’Course not.” Buddie stretched the truth to the 
thinnest web ; then let it snap back on the question, 
“What about?” 

Madge lifted her eyes to his and stared straight at 
him, until he blushed and wriggled. Then she an- 
swered quietly, — 

“About Chubbie, and,” her hand, as if by chance, 
moved till it rested on her cousin’s shoulder; “and 
some other things.” 

Buddie shook his head. Then honesty triumphed. 


156 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


‘H was, in the time of it,’’ he confessed. “Now I 
know you didn’t mean to be as cheeky as you 
sounded.” 

“No,” Madge said, still quietly; “I didn’t. And 
yet, I’m rather glad I had the,” her dimples came 
saucily; “the cheek to do it.” 

“Gibson,” David Kent was saying, over the nuts, 
that night; “I have a problem on my hands.” 

Father Gibson smiled up at the tall man across the 
table from him. 

“That’s nothing new for you, Davie,” he said 
genially. “What is it now : a balky model, or a new 
idea in gymnastics ?” 

“Neither. Worse.” Kent weighed the nut- 
crackers in his fingers thoughtfully. “It’s just an- 
other ugly duckling.” 

“I’m not surprised. You’ve been hatching them, 
ever since we were out of college. What’s worse, 
you’ve been bringing them to me for my admiration. 
What one now ?” 

Kent answered with a question. 

“You’ve a boy in school named Neal ?” 

“Yes.” 

“What like?” 

Father Gibson glanced cautiously over his shoulder. 
Then — 

“A perfectly good lay figure; not a fault to his 
name, and not an excellence strong enough to let me 
get my grip on it,” he answered, with an unconscious 
paraphrase of Kent’s words to the doctor, a few days 
before. 

Kent nodded. 

“That’s the boy, for sure.” 


KENT’S UGLY DUCKLING 


157 


Father Gibson waited till his friend had cracked 
and eaten another nut. Then — 

“Is that the duckling, Davie ?” 

“Yes.” 

Father Gibson shook his head. 

“I’m thinking that you’re overpraising him, when 
you call him that.” 

“No ; not all things considered.” Kent laid down 
the nutcrackers and dived into his pocket. “What 
about that?” he demanded, as he laid something 
down before his friend. 

Deliberately Father Gibson fitted his glasses 
astride his nose. After an interval, — 

“Did Neal do that ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Sure ? Not a copy ? ” 

“ Caught him at it, and waited for him to finish.” 

“When?” 

“A week or two ago. I stopped in to see the doctor. 
He was out, and the maid told me the boy was alone, 
shut up in the house with a cold. Naturally, I 
went in to see him — ” 

“Being the Davie that you are,” Father Gibson 
interrupted. 

“Having been the boy’s next neighbour, all sum- 
mer long,” Kent made retort. 

“Sure! Are you the Kent that Buddie talks 
about ? I never thought of its being you. But go 
on.” 

“I found the youngster working at this. He 
didn’t want to show it, but I made him. He says his 
mother used to work along the same line. Gibson, 
it’s good, confoundedly good.” 


158 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Crude, though.” 

“Of course. Think of his age. You couldn’t 
have matched it, when you were fifteen.” 

“Thanks be, I never tried !” Father Gibson said 
fervently. And then he added. “You artists are a 
curious race, Davie. You’d see promise in anything 
whatsoever, so long as it was its first appearance 
from the mind of man.” 

Kent drummed on the table. 

“Maybe. Maybe. Meantime, what about this ?” 

“How should I know? I’m no editor.” 

Kent raised his head. 

“Precisely. Still, I intend that you shall be one.” 

“Me? Davie! As if I hadn’t enough to do, 
already !” 

“Has your school ever had a paper?” Kent de- 
manded. 

“No. I trust it never will.” 

“Then how are you going to handle boys like 
this?” Kent’s voice was almost stern. 

Father Gibson’s eyes twinkled. 

“It’s my business, Davie, to drive Latin verses 
into them, not drag English verses out,” he said. 

“You might do both, you lazy duffer, without its 
hurting you,” Kent told him, with a freedom born 
of similar discussions over college supper tables. 
“Now you see here : you go in for football ?” 

“Yes.” 

“What for? A man of your figure can’t play to 
any great advantage, either to himself or to his 
school.” 

“Beware, Davie!” Father Gibson warned him, 
between chuckles. “I may not like to tell my 


KENT’S UGLY DUCKLING 


159 


waist measure, nowadays; but, at least, I’m not a 
lath.” 

“Better for you, if you were. But listen, Gibson ; 
I’m in earnest. You go in for football, for the sake 
of the grip it gives you over boys like Buddie 
Yes ? And the grip is the main thing. But how the 
mischief are you going to get a grip on boys like this 
young Neal, colourless little beggars, with just one 
scarlet thread of something that, with care, can be 
worked up into a talent And they are the boys 
that need it most. The lively ones, like Buddie 
Angell, will thrash about and squirm until they find 
themselves somewhere near the top of things. 
Youngsters like Neal are just a pile of minus signs ; 
they don’t take up any room, and they don’t point 
anywhere in particular, except along the lines you 
place them. Gibson,” Kent brought himself up 
with a round turn ; “start a paper, after Christmas, 
and I’ll design the cover for you. What’s more. I’ll 
give a prize for the best short story you can gather 
in, between now and next June.” 

Father Gibson cast an expressive glance down at 
the leaf of paper on the table beside him. 

“Not for a poem, Kent ?” he asked. 

Kent rose to his feet, laughing ; but he shook his 
head. 

“Poems be hanged !” he said. “They’re not half 
so healthy, at fifteen.” 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 

D uring the next two weeks, Father Gibson gave 
no small amount of thought and planning to 
Kent’s suggestion. In the end, though, Buddie came 
in ahead of him, albeit without a thought of Chubbie 
Neal. 

“What the school needs most is a new bulletin 
board,” he said. 

“What for ?” Theo asked him. 

Buddie answered with his mouth full. It was a 
privilege he always gave himself, when Theo was 
asked to luncheon. Not that Theo set him a bad 
example ; but because there always was so very much 
to say inside the limits of a given time. 

“News, of course,” he responded now. 

“It generally sifts round to us,” Theo said placidly. 
“Yes. I’d rather have it a little bit more 
promptly, though, and without the sifting.” 

“What sort of news, Buddie?” Daddy asked. 
“All sorts: holidays, and prizes, and who has 
mumps, and who is up for track. There’s news 
enough to keep a paper going for a year.” 

“Daily ?” Daddy queried, with a smile. 

“Of course not. But we could have a monthly, 
anyhow,” Buddie declared. 

“Wouldn’t the news get rather stale?” 

Buddie continued hopeful. 

160 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 161 


“Not if we only printed the freshest of it. If we 
ran short on that, we could put in stories of some 
sort, or Chub could give us a poem.” 

“Me ?” Tom choked and reddened. 

“Yes, me,” Buddie told him. “It would be just 
your line.” 

Theo pricked up his ears. 

“Is Tom a poet ?” he demanded. 

“You bet ! I caught him at it, the other day.” 

“Shut up !” Tom warned him. 

Buddie smiled at him across the corner of the table. 

“Keep your hair on, Thomas dear,” he advised. 
“It’s nice to be a merry poet.” 

Poet or not, Tom’s grammar forsook him in the 
crisis, and, — 

“I ain’t !” he exploded. 

“Thomas! Ain't! Oh, fie!” And then, before 
his father could stop him and so release Tom from his 
self-conscious misery, Buddie had turned back to 
Theo. “Caught him at it, like hot cakes, hair on 
end, eyes rolling, right cheek inky. He was warbling 
it out loud, while he wrote it down. It went like 
this—” 

“Shut up, you beggar !” Tom said, in a violent 
parenthesis to which no one paid the slightest atten- 
tion. 

“Like this,” Buddie repeated ; 

“ ‘ And with the coming of the spring, 

The year rolls round its gold-green ring.* ** 

His accent was indescribable in its singsong sen- 
timentality ; indescribable was the suddenness of his 
finish, “Brass, I suppose, and getting a little rusty.” 


162 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


But now Daddy did not wait to meet the angry 
appeal in the glance Tom flung him. 

“Not fair, Buddie!” he said. “It’s beastly to 
tell tales like that. Besides, for all your making 
fun of it, you couldn’t do a rhyme one-half so 
good.” 

But Buddie was quite unabashed. 

“Pre-cisely,” he assented. “That’s the reason I 
don’t try.” 

The corners of Daddy’s lips puckered into a smile 
that struck both ways. 

“Perhaps, on some accounts, it would be better if 
you did, son,” he remarked, and Buddie had a silent 
instant of pondering as to his real meaning. 

Theo, meanwhile, had turned to the scarlet and 
uneasy Tom. 

“Do you honestly write things?” he asked. 

He meant the question to be frankly admiring. 
Tom’s nerves were on edge, though, owing to Bud- 
die’s chaff, and he read into Theo’s words the pitying 
contempt of the hardy athlete for any talents of less 
brutal sort. He answered accordingly. • 

“We poor chaps that can’t play football need to 
have a little fun.” 

And Theo reddened in his turn. No fitting reply 
came to his mind, and he buried his flaming face 
behind his glass of water. 

Buddie was the first to rally, if one could call it a 
rallying, when he had not been downed in the 
slightest degree. 

“Anyhow,” he said serenely; “Chub can be 
counted on to fill up the room we have left. You 
can do that all right. Chub. Once you get the 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 163 


knack of stringing words together, you’ll go on, all 
day. Let me see !” Buddie frowned and tapped 
the cloth, while he listened to this new bee buzzing 
in his bonnet. “There’s the news, and the poetry 
to fill in with. What else do we need ? ” 

Theo had a practical idea of newspapers, for his 
father was dramatic critic on one of the greater 
dailies. 

“Printers’ ink, and an editor,” he answered 
promptly. 

Daddy contributed his mite to the discussion. 

“It is also useful to have a subscription list,” he 
suggested. 

“Oh, that’s all right,” Buddie said, with restored 
serenity. “The boys will all come in, as soon as it 
gets going. Father Gibson will look out for that. 
We all do just about what he tells us to. The main 
thing is going to be to get the proper start.” 

And so, indeed, he found it. 

The first start, of course, came, as starts so often 
do, out of the random talk, that day at luncheon. 
Up to the hour of his speaking out his suggestion, the 
subject never had occurred to Buddie’s mind. It 
had been the merest spark struck out of some earlier 
words of Theo. Struck, it kindled an idea, and out 
of the idea came the rest, even to the initial number of 
The Sesquipedalian News. 

Theo had rebelled at the name. 

“No fellow will know what it means,” he said. 

“I do,” Buddie reassured him. 

Swiftly Theo’s inevitable challenge came. 

“What does it mean 

Buddie smiled the unrufl3ed smile of the successful 


164 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


creative artist. The naming of the paper had come 
out of much careful thought, and it pleased Buddie 
greatly. 

“It means that it has more than half a leg to stand 
on. Else, they’d be afraid it would get rickets, and 
end by turning up its toes.” 

And Theo had been forced to satisfy himself with 
the information, for Buddie sturdily refused to change 
the name. 

From the first, it was generally understood that the 
new paper was child of Buddie’s brain. Indeed, he 
fathered it with energy. 

“The first number will be out, right after New 
Years,” he announced to every boy he met. “It’s 
going to be a rousing number, too, just ripping. 
Here, hand out your fifty cents !” 

“What for?” some few were bold enough to ask. 

Buddie put his tongue into his cheek. When he 
took it out, — 

“Your money’s worth,” he said. “Just you wait 
and see.” 

“All right. We’ll wait.” 

Buddie was firm. 

“Not on your life, not about the paying. No 
fifty cents, no paper.” 

“Who wants a paper?” 

“You do. Here, hand over!” And, what was 
more, he stood his ground until he gathered in his 
fifty cents. 

Now and then a boy, a budding financier, under- 
took to question what he was likely to get for his 
money. Buddie waved aside all such questionings. 

“We’ll tell you, when we get good and ready,” he 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 165 


answered, and no coaxings and no threats could lead 
him to the point of answering anything more. 

A week later, and on the very eve of the Christmas 
holidays, Buddie of a sudden was caught with a rising 
tide of misgivings. After his custom, he imparted 
the misgivings to Theo. 

“WeVe got the funds, all right enough,” he said. 
“What sticks me now is to plan what we’re going to 
give back, in place of them.” 

Theo had been chief councillor from the start ; by 
rights, he should have come forward now to bear his 
own share of the responsibility. Instead, he left the 
load to Buddie. 

“Don’t you know?” he asked, and his accent on 
the last word was rebuking. 

“Search me!” Buddie put his fists into his 
pockets, as if he hoped to find a few ideas inside 
them. 

“Then what the mischief did you take their blamed 
old money for ?” 

“Because I thought we’d need it, later on, and our 
best chance of getting something out of them was 
while they were good and curious,” Buddie said 
calmly. 

“Don’t you know, yourself, what you are going 
to do?” Theo’s voice was increasingly alarmed. 

“Ya-aes,” Buddie drawled, still calmly. “I’m 
going to fill a long-felt want.” 

“Much you are I” 

“Sure ! The school needs a paper, and a paper 
it’s going to have.” 

“Where is it going to get it ?” 

“Laddie dearest,” Buddie spoke with a manifest 


166 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


imitation of Miss Myles; "‘you ask too many ques- 
tions. Wait a little bit, and give me time to think.’’ 

Most boys, in such predicament, would have gone 
quite panicky. Not so Buddie, however. His 
experience of life had taught him that, in the end, 
he generally succeeded in getting just about all that 
he wanted. His only cause for hesitation lay in 
choosing the proper people to do the necessary work. 
Buddie himself had not the faintest notion of doing 
any of the work. The question was, who would. 
Theo gone on his way, Buddie spent a good half 
hour of deep thought upon the matter, trying to de- 
cide whether to ask advice from Daddy, or from Father 
Gibson ; or whether to put it through, alone. Cer- 
tain convictions, born of the fact that already the 
funds were in his keeping, led him to choose the latter 
course; at least, until his plans were a bit more 
settled. And Buddie felt sure that he was very good 
at making plans. 

At the very end of the afternoon, he dropped in on 
Porter, to tell him of the plans. Porter, by this 
time, had come to be a habit with Buddie. The 
reason was not far to seek ; that is, by any one who 
knew Buddie. As Buddie himself phrased it. Porter 
was better than he looked, and it must be an awful 
bore to have to stay in-doors, such weather. The 
first discovery, though, had followed the second one, 
not come before it. Porter was finding life a bore, 
just then, a bore that was not altogether free from 
aches and pains; and Buddie, watching how he 
took it, found his original attitude of benevolent 
pity changing fast to something not unlike honest 
admiration. 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 167 


Not for worlds on worlds, though, would Buddie 
have confessed in so many words, even to himself, 
that he was growing fond of Porter. Nevertheless, 
that was the ignoble fact. Porter’s perkiness, his 
smug self-consciousness had all gone out of him, 
as he lay there on his back and laughed at things, 
and kept still about that corner of his person which 
was encased in plaster. He was not bad company, 
either, could tell a story without getting all snarled 
up in the middle of it, and he knew an alternating 
current when he met one. All things considered, 
even including the Pet and the dangling rows and rows 
of neckties and the silver things stuck all about the 
room, Buddie decided that Porter was a thundering 
good fellow, and ought to have his chance. 

Naturally, then, he took his half -formed plan to 
Porter, now out of bed, though still a prisoner inside 
his room. Porter had common sense and time to 
think things over; he knew how to appreciate a 
good thing when it was laid down before him. Be- 
sides, when Porter did go back into school, he was 
bound to have more leisure than the other boys, 
since every species of athletic training would be out 
of the question for him for some months to come. 

Hmmmmmm — m ! 

As that last thought struck Buddie, he walked 
more slowly. At length, he quickened his pace. 
Not a bad idea ! The rest of the walk went swiftly, 
and Buddie found himself at Porter’s steps, while 
still his brain was whizzing with odds and ends of 
half-completed plans. 

Rather to his annoyance, he found Madge in 
Porter’s room ahead of him. 


168 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Buddie liked Madge, had liked her all the better 
since the day she had confessed to him her growing 
appreciation of her cousin, and had talked over with 
him the causes of her change of heart. Now, though, 
he would have preferred to find Madge absent. 
The things he wished to say to Porter were for 
Porter’s ears alone. 

Buddie-fashion, he made no bones of his prefer- 
ences. 

“You here?” he asked her, with a casual sort of 
nod. 

“As usual,” she told him gayly. 

“Oh.” Buddie subsided into a chair, and 
crossed his legs. “So I see,” he added, after an 
interval. 

Madge laughed, without the faintest trace of any 
temper. 

“Does that mean you wish I’d go ?” she queried. 

“We-el.” Buddie did his best to keep his accent 
noncommittal. 

Madge rose from her chair. 

“All right. Then—” 

“Oh, don’t let me rush you off like this,” Buddie 
said, with belated courtesy. 

With a mocking glance at him from over her shoul- 
der, she merely crossed the fioor and seated herself 
anew, this time beside her cousin. 

“Then,” she finished out her interrupted sentence ; 
“I’m awfully afraid you will have to be disappointed. 
I came here to see Algy, you know; not you.” 
With a little cuddling gesture, she settled herself well 
down inside her chair. Then, “Jf you’ve things to 
say, out with them !” she bade Buddie. “I never 



Does that mean that you wish I’d go ? ” she queried. 
Page 168. 


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THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 169 


get bored, listening, and I devoutly hope I don’t 
tell tales.” 

And Buddie did her the honour of taking her at her 
literal word. 

After his plan was laid down before them, Madge 
brushed aside her cousin’s objections and spoke out. 

“Buddie, you’ve hit on the very thing.” 

“But I can’t do it,” Porter remonstrated. 

“You must. It’s your chance,” she bade him 
undauntedly. 

“It’s off my line.” 

“Get it on, then,” Buddie ordered. 

Porter clasped his hands behind his head. 

“I’d be an awful fool about it,” he remarked at the 
general direction of the ceiling. 

“All the better !” Buddie said, a bit incautiously. 

Instantly Madge pounced on him. 

“Buddie Angell, what do you mean ?” 

“Nothing.” Buddie was scarlet. 

“You do, too. I saw it coming. What’s more, I 
believe you’re right about it,” she said, heedless of 
her cousin and his probable feelings. 

Buddie caught the infection of her heedlessness, 
as he challenged her, — 

“What was it, then, if you’re so sure ?” 

But Madge had had a belated memory of Porter, 
and, in her turn, she blushed scarlet. 

“Out with it !” Buddie dared her. 

There was a pause. Then Porter flung his glove 
into the ring. 

“Fire ahead, Madge. Don’t spare my feelings. 
I’m proof, by now.” 

For just a minute, the girl sat silent, her colour 


170 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


coming and going hotly, and her teeth shut upon her 
scarlet lower lip. Then she sprang to her feet and 
stood facing them, as if at bay. 

“Algy, I wouldn’t hurt you, for the world,” she 
said, and Buddie had a minute of wondering at the 
unaccustomed quaver in her young voice; “but 
I’ve put myself into a corner where the best thing I 
can do is to speak out. I’m sorry. I was very 
stupid ; and you do know,” the brown eyes glittered ; 
“that I like you lots, even if I’m going to scratch you 
— hard. Buddie is on the right track, Algy. He 
knows, just as you and I do, that school hasn’t come 
out the way you hoped it would, this fall. No,” 
for she caught her cousin’s eyes, and they stirred her 
pity; “no, honestly, we haven’t talked it over, not 
Buddie and I. But you told me things, some 
things that Buddie can’t help knowing. Besides, 
you oughtn’t to mind it, if he does. He wouldn’t 
have stuck to you and been to see you, all this time, 
if he hadn’t been a friend that you could count on.” 

“The only one, by Jove!” Porter said bitterly. 

Madge’s chin lifted. 

“What about me ? I count, even if I am nothing 
but a girl. Besides, we are the only pair of people 
who know you right down through and through; 
we are worth dozens of the others. But listen, 
Algy. The reason you haven’t — we may as well go 
at it, straight — haven’t caught on any better with 
the boys, I honestly believe, is because you aren’t 
ever willing to do anything, unless you know you’re 
sure to do it well. And there’s nothing in the world 
so horrid as that sort of sureness. We all of us hate 
people who never make any blunders. All fall, 


THE SESQUIPEDALIAN NEWS 171 


you’ve been walking along with your nose in the 
air, doing the things you could do to perfection, 
and acting as if the others weren’t worth touching 
with a pair of tongs. Naturally, the boys got down 
on you. Either you went ahead of them, or else you 
made them feel you despised the things they did. 
That wasn’t good for a new boy to do. Hate me, 
Algy ?” She brought herself up suddenly upon the 
question. 

“N-no.” But, in spite of himself, the answer 
dragged a little. 

With a swift change back to her former gentleness, 
Madge turned and stood leaning on the back of her 
cousin’s chair. Only her eyes touched him, though ; 
her eyes, for Porter felt their honest gaze as if they 
had been a handclasp. 

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. “It’s horrid to 
hurt people, when you really care for them. Still, 
I had to; I didn’t dare to miss the chance. You 
should make the boys really know you, the real, true, 
human you, not the dressed-up thing that walks 
about with his nose in the air and — ” She broke off 
again. “Try it, anyhow,” she urged her cousin. 
“The boys will like you any amount better, if you 
fail. Besides, you wont fail; I won’t let you, not 
if I have to do half the work, myself.” 

Next day, and after an evening spent with Father 
Gibson, Buddie announced to his astounded mates 
that The Sesquipedalian News would surely be 
launched in January, with Porter as Editor in Chief. 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


THE TWO COUSINS 

“TTE certainly does have a trick of taking one's 

J-1 breath away,” Father Gibson said to Kent, 
next night at dinner. 

Kent laughed. 

“Meaning Buddie?” he inquired, for Father 
Gibson’s words had had no preface. “He always 
did have. What now ?” 

“ He appeared to me at nine o’clock, last night, to 
empty out his pockets and his plans. Apparently, 
he has felt our recent cogitations flying around in the 
air. He has his funds ready to start an ambitious 
monthly, which he has named, heaven knows why. 
The Sesquipedalian News, with, of all things. Porter 
as head editor.” 

“Buddie to the life. But why Porter ?” 

“That’s the mystery I can’t quite solve. In all 
probability, it is nothing but chance ; but — well, 
Buddie isn’t always the irresponsible youth he seems.” 

Kent nodded. 

“So I’ve found,” he answered briefly. 

Buddie’s attitude to his mates at large, however, 
was distinctly irresponsible. Assailed with ques- 
tions and suggestions from every side, he shook his 
head, stuck his fists into his pockets and gave back 
any answers that the whim of the minute might 
chance to dictate. Yes, the paper would be out, 

172 


THE TWO COUSINS 


173 


about the twentieth. Theo was getting the ads. 
Yes, they should have their money’s worth of news, 
even if he had to get to work to makerit up, himself, 
in season to go to press. Yes, Father Gibson did 
know. He had promised to write a letter of welcome 
to this new baby in literary circles, a letter that would 
be printed on the first page. Yes, it was going to be 
printed on a real press. It was not started to give 
Bunny Rogers a chance to show off on the toy one he 
had received on his last birthday. It was not true 
that Neal was going to have four poems in it. He 
might have one story ; but poems were all r — 

“They fill up a lot of room, though,” Bunny 
Rogers suggested practically. “It’s not more than 
half the work to set them up, either. The lines are 
short, and they are bound to have a lot of empty 
margin.” 

Buddie shrugged his shoulders. 

“We’re not out to save work,” he said magnifi- 
cently. “What we are after is to produce a really 
good thing.” 

Later, when he had recovered from the crushing. 
Bunny regretted that he had not reminded Buddie 
that it is the easiest thing in the world to be gener- 
ous with the next man’s toil. Buddie, although 
declaring with perfect truth that he was going to do 
none of the work, yet in these latter days was answer- 
ing all his questions in the first person plural, and with 
a bland assurance which implied that, in reality, the 
whole forthcoming monthly was to be dragged and 
cudgelled bit by bit out of his own brain. 

On one point only, Buddie refused to answer 
questions or to accept comments. That point was 


174 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Porter’s fitness for his duties. When the boys 
approached the subject, Buddie deftly turned them 
down other channels of discussion. If they came 
back again and insisted on remaining, he sat down on 
the nearest thing in reach, put his fists into his 
pockets, and whistled. He stopped whistling only 
when they gave it up and went away. 

Not that anybody in the school denied Buddie’s 
right to choose the editor. Certain well-established 
traditions of the school concerned the rights of 
Buddie Angell. Curiously enough, they had sprung 
into life, well grown. Nobody had ever stopped to 
question whence those rights had come. 

“That’s the queer thing about it all,” Porter said 
to Madge, one night. “He just does things, never 
makes any row about it; and everybody lets him. 
If he poked himself in, it would be different. But he 
doesn’t poke ; he is just there on the spot, looking as 
if he didn’t care a copper dog whether the thing came 
off or not. Somebody always is sure to ask him 
what he thinks, though; and then he gives us the 
whole plan as he has thought it out, and with all the 
flourishes. It generally is a good plan, too. But he 
never looks as if he minded whether we took it on, 
or not.” 

“Suppose you didn’t?” Madge queried thought- 
fully, for she was a girl, and liked to think about the 
other side of things. 

Her cousin was a boy, though. Wherefore, — 

“But we do,” he said, and ended that phase of the 
discussion. 

When he took up another phase, his voice had 
dropped a little. 


THE TWO COUSINS 


175 


‘H only wish I knew the way he did it,” he said. 

For once, Madge failed to get behind the surface 
of his question. 

“I thought you were just telling,” she reminded 
him. 

“The way; but not the how.” Porter evidently 
had an idea at the back of his words, even if he did 
not make it very plain. Then, for apparently he 
realized his own lack of plainness, he added, “He 
does get on with everybody, you know.” 

Madge nodded emphatically. 

“Yes; but he never stops to think about it,” she 
remarked, after an interval. 

“I wonder,” Porter said. Then he fell silent. 

Madge filled the long pause by eating an orange 
she had stolen from her cousin’s luncheon tray. 
Finding him deaf to sundry smacks and chokings, 
she eyed him askance and saw the worry in his eyes. 
She snapped a seed at him to rouse him from his 
musings ; but her aim and her intentions both missed 
fire. Then, when only a little heap of chips remained 
to show that there had ever been an orange, she 
spoke, without so much as a clearing of her throat 
by"way of warning signal. 

“What’s wrong, Algy ?” 

That was Madge. Some girls would have asked 
if anything was wrong, and so given him a chance to 
retreat inside his shell. Madge was too wise for 
that. 

Porter looked up from the fingers he was fitting 
together as carefully as if they had been pieces of a 
Chinese puzzle. 

“Madge, the boys don’t like me. Why?” 


176 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Strike good metal suddenly, and it rings true. 
So did Madge. She wasted no energy in polite 
denials. Instead, — 

“For the simple reason that it takes a while to 
know you,” she told her cousin fearlessly. 

He reddened at her words ; then he gulped a little, 
and sat silent. It was ever so much more agreeable 
to lash himself than to have Madge take the whip 
into her own hands. Madge’s answer had showed 
that she shared his belief about the boys. For just 
a minute. Porter turned deaf to the real liking and 
appreciation of her answer. 

“You sound as if you shared their opinion,” he 
said huffily. 

She proceeded to put him in his proper place. 

“That isn’t nice of you, Algy. Anybody, to hear 
you, would think you were fishing for a compliment. 
Besides,” her sternness melted a little, as her eyes 
swept over all the little landmarks of his long im- 
prisonment, then rested on his face, grown thin and 
just now looking worried; “besides, you know it 
isn’t true. What do you suppose makes me keep 
coming here to see you ?” 

“Lack of anything better to do,” he answered, 
and an older person would have been quick to set 
down his unwonted harshness to its real cause; the 
ache of mental growing pains. In the intervals 
between the visits of Buddie and Madge, intervals 
unbroken by any messages from any of the other 
boys. Porter had had leisure to do his own fair share 
of thinking things. 

Madge, though keen beyond her years, yet was 
unable to understand her cousin’s irritation. Girl 


THE TWO COUSINS 


177 


fashion, instead of seeing that it was caused by things 
in general, she took it as aimed against herself. 
To her intense mortification, she felt her eyes grow 
hot and wet. She would have died, though, rather 
than have had Porter suspect the fact, so she sprang 
up hurriedly and walked to the window. 

“I thought I heard the car,” she said, from that 
safe refuge. 

It was no use, though, for, — 

“Madge, come back here,” her cousin ordered. 

The tears were still near the surface; but she 
managed to fling him a laugh. 

“Please,” she reminded him. 

“Please, then,” he said shortly. “Anyhow, don’t 
dodge. I want to talk things out.” 

“What sort of things?” Bending to look down 
into the street, Madge drew an orange-flavoured 
fist across her eyes. Then she walked back to her 
cousin’s side. “What sort of things, Algy?” she 
repeated, and now her voice was very kind. 

For a minute, he sat looking up at her, as she 
stood before him, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown- 
clothed, her hands clasped lightly, her head tilted a 
little to one side. She was a pretty girl, and an un- 
commonly nice one, in spite of her teasing ways. 
She had been wonderfully loyal to him,’ all those 
stupid weeks. Boy fashion, knowing this fact. 
Porter was making up his mind to repay her loyalty 
with the gift all girls most covet from their boy com- 
panions, outspoken, downright speech. 

“What sort of things, Algy?” she was repeating 
once again. 

“School, and the boys,” he answered. 


178 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


In spite of his will to the contrary, there was a 
dropping accent in his voice. Madge heard it, and 
she offered a sharp corrective. 

“And Buddie,” she reminded him. 

“Yes, and Buddie. Only Buddie is on the other 
side of the count.” 

“The others haven’t had his chance,” Madge said, 
with a deliberate effort after consolation. 

“They didn’t take it.” 

“Mm. And Buddie did.” Madge’s voice was 
thoughtful. “Yes, that’s the difference.” 

Porter dived back again into his thoughts. 

“Buddie does take his chances,” Madge continued 
slowly. “To see him, though, you’d think he blun- 
dered into them, unless you knew the truth of it.” 
Then she faced her cousin. “Out with it, Algy!” 
she bade him. 

“I’m not sure that I know just how, Madge.” 
He laughed uneasily. “It’s only that I’d counted 
a lot on changing my school. I supposed, once I 
was in with another lot of fellows, they’d like me 
better. They don’t, though.” 

“How do you know ?” 

“How does anybody know such things ? We feel 
it in our marrow, I suppose. Anyhow, they were 
down on me, from the start. I don’t know why.” 

“Tom Neal said you cheeked Buddie, that first 
morning.” Madge evidently was quoting, and too 
much in earnest to mind a little bit of slang. 

“I just chaffed him,” Porter defended himself 
swiftly, for his penitence had not yet reached the 
point of being willing to sit down and pick his sins to 
pieces, and then wallow in the dust. In other words. 


THE TWO COUSINS 


179 


he was ready to nod a recognition to them ; but not 
to take them to his heart as advisers. “That 
wasn’t the same thing at all.” 

“It depends.” 

“On what ?” 

“Whether you knew him well enough. Don’t 
be a dunce and beg off, Algy. You know you’d 
have been furious in Buddie’s place.” 

“You don’t chaff people, unless you like their 
looks,” Porter argued. “When you really under- 
stand it, it’s just like giving them a compliment.” 

“Yes; but we don’t care about having compli- 
ments from all sorts of people,” Madge said shrewdly. 
Then, half repenting her own downrightness, she 
dropped down in a chair beside her cousin and turned 
her serious face to his. “Algy,” she said; “I 
don’t want to be a little beast, and I think it is just 
horrid for a girl to be a scold and lecture people on 
their sins. But you asked me, you know.” 

Promptly he answered to the new gentleness in her 
voice, so unlike his mother’s futile, sugary petting. 

“Yes, Madge, I did. What’s more, if I ask for 
a pill, I suppose I’ve got to swallow it. I’ve been 
thinking out things lately, and I may as well talk 
them out, too. You’re the only one, though, who 
can see both sides. Buddie is one of the boys; 
mother would just make a row, and pity me into a 
perfect soup of tears. What I want is to get at the 
way to make things better. Just be honest; I’ll 
promise you I’ll play fair and not try to hit back 
again.” 

She gave one quick glance at the plaster case, still 
decorating his leg. Otherwise, she never flinched. 


180 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“What is it, Algy ?” 

“As I say, the boys don’t like me. What’s the 
reason ?” 

This time, she made no attempt to parry. 

“You don’t go at them right.” 

“Why not?” 

“You put their backs up, at the start. Wait!” 
She laid her hand on her cousin’s sleeve, and he felt 
reassured by the steady, friendly pressure. “I do 
it, myself. We’re as alike as we can be, in some 
ways, Algy; anybody would know that we are 
cousins. But there’s just this difference : I’m a girl, 
and people will stand more from me. Besides, I 
fight it out to a finish, just as I did with Buddie, and 
make peace. You don’t follow it up, and show you 
mean to be a good fellow, after all. As soon as you 
see you’ve upset them, you go on your nerves, and 
turn red, and walk off with your chin in the air. 
It’s then that they find out that they don’t like you. 
You ought to keep them so busy that they won’t 
have any time to think, until it’s over, and for- 
gotten.” 

“But they’d remember it again.” 

“Not if you give them plenty of other things to 
think about. It’s the only way to get over a wrong 
start. And,” again the fingers stroked the sleeve; 
“you did start wrong, Algy, dead wrong.” 

Even in his penitent worryings. Porter remained 
human. Wherefore, — 

“Neal hasn’t much to say,” he remarked. 

Madge promptly arose and smote him. 

“That has nothing to do with it. And, anyhow, 
he only said it, because I was criticising Buddie, 


THE TWO COUSINS 


isr 


and he wanted me to know it wasn’t Buddie’s fault. 
I can tell you this, Algy Porter, Chubbie Neal isn’t 
one-half the milksop that he seems. I can’t say I 
like him ; but maybe,” a note of laughter came into 
her voice ; “maybe he is like some other people, and 
will improve upon acquaintance.” 

“Does that mean me ?” Porter asked her. 

“Yes, it does.” 

“I’m glad. At least — No; I’m sorry,” he said 
slowly. 

“What for.^^ You don’t want it the other way 
about ; do you ? ” Then, because she saw her cou- 
sin now was really hurt, “Wouldn’t you rather I 
cared about you more, as I went on?'* 

“Yes, only — ” 

“Listen,” she interrupted. “Even as lately as 
last summer, I didn’t care anything about you, only 
as one has to care about cousins. Now,” her eyes 
softened ; “I’d find it hard to get on without seeing 
you.” 

“Honestly, Madge?” 

“Honestly, Algy.” 

“I wonder why.” But, this time, Madge knew 
perfectly well that her cousin was not trying to fish 
for a compliment. 

Purposely she misunderstood him. 

“Because, as I say, just at first you do put our 
backs up. Really, though, Algy, I hate to be rude ; 
but you asked me.” 

He nodded, his eyes on the carpet. 

“Fire ahead,” he told her briefly. 

Unseen by him, she nodded in swift approval. 
Under it all, her cousin was game. She sent her 


182 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


longest, stoutest arrow flying home. No matter if 
it did hurt. Curing the hurt, she hoped to cure some 
other things. 

“The whole trouble is, you take yourself too much 
in earnest. You aren’t conceited, exactly, even if 
you do think about yourself a good share of the time. 
You aren’t half so pleased with yourself, really and 
truly, as you want to have us think you are. Away 
down inside you, you are always wondering why you 
didn’t do things any better, and wishing you could 
try them all over again. But the boys don’t get 
away down inside you. They’ve got to get past the 
Algy of it, first.” 

He winced ; but, wincing, this time, he laughed. 

“I didn’t choose my name, Madge.” 

“No, worse luck!” she told him remorselessly. 
“Things would have been any amount easier for 
you, if you had just been Bill, and hadn’t cared so 
much about the creases in your trousers. That’s 
what the boys stick at, that and the thing they 
call your everlasting cheek.” 

“But, Madge — ” Then wisely Porter fell silent. 
But, “What’s to be done?” he asked at length, and 
his voice was dreary. 

Through her thick lashes, Madge studied him for 
a minute with pitying eyes. Then she said, with 
seeming pitilessness, — 

“Stop remembering you’ve got a self of any kind. 
Just find out what the boys want done, and roll up 
your sleeves and pitch in and do it.” 

He nodded slowly. The touch of slang, and the 
sound common sense: these reconciled him to the 
preachment. 


THE TWO COUSINS 


183 


“But, Algy,” Madge clasped her fingers, and stared 
down at their whitening knuckles; “this has been 
very disagreeable of me.” 

“I asked.” 

“Yes; but I might have — ” She looked up 
abruptly, “You know, though, we are friends?” 

“The best one I have ever had, Madge,” he an- 
swered gravely. “ What’s more, you won’t be sorry.” 

And she never was. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 

I N the meantime, the holidays had come and gone. 

At the Angells’, they had been occasion for much 
festivity and feasting ; and, January once ushered in. 
Miss Myles felt privileged to lie back on her laurels 
and on her nerves. Not only was it her first Christ- 
mas in the Angell household; but it was the first 
house party the doctor had given on such a scale. 
Up to now, in Miss Myles’s experience of him, a 
random week-end guest, usually professional and 
hence a little casual about his meals : this had been 
the limit of the doctor’s entertaining. 

This time, it had been very different. Two weeks 
before Christmas, the doctor had looked up from 
his morning mail to announce that his sister and her 
husband were coming for the holidays, the half- 
sister of whose immaculate housekeeping Buddie 
always had been full of tales. The news had been 
enough to send the stolid Miss Myles into a spasm of 
excitement ; for the next two or three days, she spent 
her time between her household notebooks and an 
array of polishing cloths of every size and texture. 
Miss Myles was satisfied with her present position in 
the doctor’s home and Miss Myles was wise in her 
own generation. She knew that her position would 
be lasting, only so long as she could convince the 
doctor’s sister of her value in the house; she knew 
184 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 


185 


that feminine eyes were not easily blinded to details. 
Therefore, she made up her household lists with care, 
and, in the intervals, she polished everything in 
sight. 

After two days of violent exercise on her part, 
and of consequent misery upon the part of the doctor 
and the boys. Miss Myles received more news. 
This time, it leaked out, instead of being properly 
announced. To Dr. Angell, it seemed too much a 
matter of course to need announcement that David 
Kent was coming to them for the holidays. What 
if he did live in the city ? Christmas week was a 
time when friends wanted to be under the same roof. 
Miss Myles, accordingly, set her wits to work in 
certain new directions. 

Three days afterwards, with every air of mystery, 
the doctor called Miss Myles into his office. It was 
just a Christmas surprise for Buddie, he explained. 
Miss Myles must keep the secret safe, till it came 
out of itself, the twenty-third. Miss Myles had 
heard Buddie talk about Teresa She was Teresa 
Hamilton, a girl almost seventeen years old, one of 
Buddie’s best friends whom he had not seen during 
an aching gap of three long months. And Teresa’s 
brother — she had any number of them ; this was 
the next in line and only a little younger — was just 
up from a long illness and needed a change. They 
used to live next door to his sister, too ; she would 
be glad to see them. The doctor, turning over the 
papers heaped on his desk, rambled on and on. Then, 
all of a sudden, he came to the point. Yes, he had 
asked the two of them for Christmas. Christmas 
needed any amount of young life in the house. But 


186 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Buddie mustn’t know a word about it, till the taxi 
landed them at the front door. 

Miss Myles went her way, perplexed. The 
doctor’s house was not a large one ; it was especially 
weak in the matter of bedrooms. Counting her 
own, it had just four. Miss Myles felt that her 
room was her castle ; it would be hard to see it in- 
vaded by an advancing horde. And the horde, 
counting carefully and reckoning in pairs, numbered 
eight. Miss Myles paused in her reckoning to won- 
der what would happen when the doctor found that 
he must double up with the tall artist. 

And then, the morning of the twentieth, the doctor 
told her to be sure to have an extra bed for a young 
engineer named Hearn. Miss Myles, listening to 
this final, staggering announcement, knew an instant 
of sincere regret that she had not been born in the 
epoch when women were supposed to swoon, not 
work, in face of an approaching crisis. The young 
engineer named Hearn appeared to her to be the 
final straw laid on the camel’s back of hospitality. 
She assented vaguely, and went away. Up in her 
room, though, she made her moan, and aloud. 

“Four rooms !” she said. “Three of the family, 
two maids, six guests, and Me ! Does the man 
think they can sleep in the fiour barrel ? Thank 
heaven I’m not his wife ! It’s bad enough to have 
to face it, when I know I can get out, if I can’t endure 
it any longer.” She shut her eyes, as if in silent sup- 
plication. Then, rising, she sought her desk and 
then her dressing table. Penholders for men ; belt 
pins for women. She must work it out with care. 
And, in the end of all, she did. However, Buddie 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 


187 


and Tom were implored not to report the exact 
location of their temporary dormitory. 

Hearn had been an afterthought, though; wel- 
come, but almost a necessity. Hearn had been 
one of their immediate summer party. Topog- 
rapher and therefore officer in Mr. MacDougalFs 
engineering camp, he had been thrown into constant 
contact with the three youngsters, Buddie, Tom, 
and, above all, with Teresa Hamilton. When the 
time for the autumn breaking-up had come, Hearn 
had taken the good-byes very badly, had made 
it plain to everybody that he would be counting 
the days till he saw Teresa Hamilton once more. 
And yet, as a matter of fact, it was not Teresa who 
had caused Hearn to be asked into the doctor’s 
Christmas party, but, rather, Ebenezer. 

For a bob-tailed old English sheep dog of prize 
extraction and careful training, Ebenezer certainly 
had hours that dangerously approached stupidity. 
For a devoted comrade whose life, by rights, ought 
to have been summed up in the expressed wishes 
of his young master, Ebenezer had his moments 
when he could best be described as pig-headed. 
Worst of all, these hours and moments invariably 
seized him, when he was in the middle of a crowded 
city street. Not to mince matters, now and then 
Ebenezer bolted. 

Curiously enough, no amount of experience 
could teach Buddie to recognize the symptoms of 
that bolting. In fact, it came, unheralded by 
symptoms. Ebenezer merely put down his hairy 
head between his shoulders, shut his hairy ears to 
any remonstrances that might be shouted after 


188 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


him, and pelted off at top speed in whatever direc- 
tion seemed to him most attractive. Buddie, as 
a matter of course, pelted after him, a shouting, 
perspiring, agonizing Buddie who took dangerous 
short cuts across the corners, who butted blindly 
into people as he ran. To Buddie, the moments 
of the chase appeared to be endless, especially 
endless when the sidewalk throngs temporarily 
cut away his view of the gray and hairy bundle 
pounding along before him. As a matter of fact, 
the race usually covered six or seven city blocks. 
It usually ended by Buddie’s suddenly coming 
upon a smiling Ebenezer, halted on a corner 
and waiting placidly for his young master to over- 
take him. Ebenezer was wise and wily. Before 
his happy smile, beneath the extravagant leaps and 
clumsy gambols with which he sought to show 
out his enjoyment at their meeting, Buddie’s tongue 
forgot its rebuking, Buddie’s hand, lifted to cuff, 
fell back again only to caress. And, a few days 
later, Ebenezer did it all over again. Up to the 
middle of that December, all the races had come 
to that same finish. Neither Buddie nor Ebenezer 
saw any reason that their routine should not go 
on indefinitely. 

It was on a Saturday morning, not ten days 
before Christmas, that the routine was broken. 
Buddie, with Ebenezer tagging at his heels, had 
gone out early on some errands. The morning 
was crispy and, for New York, moderately cold; 
the crispy chill went rushing through Ebenezer’s 
veins like wine. At the end of the first block, he 
had ceased to be tagging at Buddie’s heels. At 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 


189 


the end of ti^e second, he had bolted. At the end 
of the fifteenth, a distracted Buddie was still in 
hot pursuit, regardless of the fact that Ebenezer, 
rounding the third corner in the shelter of a mul- 
titude of skirts and trouser legs, was contentedly 
munching a bone in a back alley, not five hundred 
feet from the Angell doorsteps. However, for all 
practical purposes connected with his welfare, 
Ebenezer might as well have been rambling along 
the Bowery, or snoozing in a corner of Grant’s 
tomb. A person with a toothpick in his mouth 
and a stiff hat set an inch askew was lounging near 
the entrance to the alley, one eye upon the frowsy 
dog, the other one upon the policeman at the corner 
of the Avenue. 

At luncheon, the doctor looked anxious. 

“Not back yet. Miss Myles? What can be 
keeping him? As a rule, he’s on hand at meals.” 
Daddy tapped the cloth with a nervousness quite 
alien to his controlled fingers. “I think,” he rose 
from the table; “I’ll telephone across to Kent. 
It’s not like Buddie to stay out over a meal, with- 
out sending word ; but he forgets most other things, 
when he has the chance to be with Kent.” 

Tom looked up, as the doctor came back to the 
table. 

“Get him?” he asked. 

The doctor shook his head. 

“Not there.” 

“Queer !” Tom said. Then he corked his utter- 
ance with a laden fork. 

“What time did you say he started, Tom ?” 

“Just after nine.” Tom strangled heroically. 


190 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


in order to give prompt answer. “He had Eben- 
ezer with him ; and, just before he shut the door, 
he called up to me that he’d surely be back before 
you were.” 

“Nine. And it’s after — ” The doctor checked 
himself abruptly, and sat listening. Was there 
a click of the front door, a step in the hall ; or did 
his ears deceive him into thinking he heard the 
sounds which would mean so much to him ? 

Tom went on eating tranquilly. Alarm or no 
alarm, it was unwise to go hungry. His teeth 
crunched through a bit of toast. 

“Hush !” the doctor bade him sharply. 

This time, there was no question of the step. 
It came towards them swiftly, yet the doctor, 
listening, felt its tiredness, its absolute dejection. 

“Buddie?” he called. 

“Yes.” The answering voice was flat and lifeless. 

The doctor pushed back his chair and rose, just 
as Buddie came through the doorway. At the 
sight of him, even Tom scrambled to his feet. This 
was a new Buddie, one he had never seen, one 
whose existence, even, he had never suspected. 
This Buddie’s face was white and weazen, with 
deep lines cut around the unsteady lips, deep shadows 
below the eyes which glittered feverishly. This 
Buddie’s shoulders sagged, his tread was nothing 
but a shamble. It was as if, in that one winter 
morning, all the boyish vigour had been stricken 
out of him. 

“Buddie?” his father said again. And then, 
“Dear boy !” 

But Buddie made no move to come forward. In- 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 


191 


stead, still halting on the threshold, he put one 
hand against the doorway, as if to keep himself 
from falling where he stood. 

“Daddy,” he said unsteadily; “IVe lost my 
Ebenezer.” 

And then he burst out sobbing, not gently, as 
a girl would do, but harshly, huskily, with great 
boy sobs that shook him from head to foot, the 
kind of sobs which, mercifully, few boys ever know, 
and those the boys whose hearts are near to break- 
ing. 

To Tom, the next half hour seemed to be endless ; 
but it saw the end of Buddie’s sobbing. Daddy 
was responsible for that; he was quick to realize 
that, for the time being, his son was the thing he 
termed a case. He soothed and comforted as only 
Daddy could comfort Buddie; but he helped out 
his soothing by something sweet and sickish in a 
glass. Then, as soon as he could take himself 
away from Buddie, he shut himself up with his 
office telephone, praying, meanwhile, that it might 
not be too late. Daddy loved his fellow-men, and 
gave his life up to serving them. However, he 
did not trust them absolutely, where a dog of Eben- 
ezer’s pedigree was concerned. Nevertheless, he 
offered Buddie the encouragement that could be 
gained from the fact that Ebenezer was too large 
to escape notice, and that his collar was fully marked. 
And the doctor, for the once rejoicing in his per- 
sonal influence in high places, had notified the 
police, and the newspapers, and even the express 
companies; that last, in case some villain should 
think of shipping Ebenezer out of town. 


192 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Saturday afternoon was unending, and Sunday 
and Monday were worse. Buddie could not eat; 
the weazen look never left his face ; the deepening 
lines around his lips showed how the strain was 
taking hold of him. Daddy went to bed, Monday 
night, divided between the longing for Teresa’s 
coming and the desperate resolve to cancel his 
Christmas party utterly. And Aunt Julia was 
due, next day. She would expect to find the house- 
hold in blithest holiday humour, not sodden with 
anxiety and panic fear over the fate of the missing 
Ebenezer. It was long past three o’clock, when 
Daddy ceased to beat his pillows and to tie his 
blankets up in rope-like knots. Not all the phi- 
losophy and the science in the world would send 
him off to tranquil dreamland, when he suspected 
that, in the room across the hall, Buddie was staring 
wide-eyed at the darkness, and seeing there picture 
after picture of his vanished comrade. 

Next morning, Tuesday, though, Buddie had 
braced himself visibly. Ebenezer was gone, evi- 
dently for all time, and life would always be an 
empty thing in consequence. Nevertheless, Aunt 
Julia was not to blame; it would not be fair to 
spoil her visit by the general gloom. 

Buddie’s eyes were heavy still, his face was weazen. 
However, he tried to crack a joke above his grape- 
fruit, and, a little later, he followed up his attempt 
at cheer by chaffing Tom for donning a new necktie. 
Daddy met his mood halfway, his pity for Buddie 
increasing with his mounting pride. Buddie was 
proving himself game. 

Breakfast, then, would have gone off fairly well. 


EBENEZER GETS LOST 


193 


had it not been for Miss Myles. At Buddie’s 
third attempt after a joke, she looked over at the 
doctor with a sugary smile. 

“Isn’t it good to see the old merry Buddie coming 
out again?” she asked. “I’ve told him all along 
that he would get used to it in time.” 

Buddie’s chair crashed backwards on the floor; 
his glass of water upset under the napkin he had 
cast upon it. 

“Will you shut up !” he exploded at Miss Myles, 
and then the stairs trembled under his ascending 
feet. 

Just what answer Miss Myles would have given, 
just what half-hearted rebuke Daddy would have 
uttered : these things were never known. A sud- 
den insistent ringing of the bell sent Miss Myles 
flying to the door, and brought the doctor to his 
feet. Such a ringing as that was sure to mean 
emergency of one sort or another. The doctor 
stood poised, ready for any emergency that might 
be demanded of him. 

“For gracious sakes !” The accent showed that, 
for the once. Miss Myles had been jarred from her 
decorum. 

Then there came another jar, the thud of a portly 
body falling heavily, and a rushing noise, as of 
another portly body hastening upstairs. And then 
there came a roar from Buddie, a roar whose mean- 
ing was completely lost in noise. 

The doctor stepped across the threshold. 

“Miss Myles, what has — ” he was beginning 
in amazement. 

Miss Myles, already sitting up, made a clutch 


194 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


at her flaxen hair, too much embarrassed by its 
condition to realize that her blouse had popped 
open, all up and down the back. In the doorway, 
facing her, stood a strange young man, a good- 
looking young man whose expression was struggling 
between mirth and utter consternation. Turn- 
ing to follow the set gaze of Miss Myles, the doctor’s 
eyes fell on him with increased amazement. 

“Hearn ! Where in — ” 

But the doctor’s words were drowned in the 
noise of scuffling on the stair-top, in shouts from 
Buddie, and in long, wheezy sighs of intense content. 
Mystifled, forgetful for the moment of his unexpected 
guest, the doctor looked up the stairs. There at 
the top lay Buddie, prostrate as Miss Myles had 
been, and for the selfsame cause; and over and 
over him in an abandonment of rapture rolled and 
squirmed and twisted a monstrous and untidy 
budget of grizzly gray hair. From underneath 
the bundle, Buddie’s voice rang out, breathless, 
but resounding in its joy, — 

“Daddy! Daddy! Ebenezer has come back!” 

But Daddy, deaf to Buddie’s proclamation of 
a wholly evident fact, had turned back to the open 
door to welcome Hearn. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


AT CHRISTMAS 

D O explain it to me,” Teresa was demanding. 
“I may be very stupid; but I can’t seem to 
discover just what it was that happened.” 

Hearn, the object of her questions, laughed. He 
was an attractive boy of twenty-six or so, with red 
hair, and a pair of red-brown eyes which just now 
were fixed in manifest approval on the girl before 
him. The approval showed more than a trace of 
sentiment ; but sentiment was wholly lacking 
from Teresa’s face and voice. She was as capable 
as a woman, but as downright as a boy. Her 
evident pleasure at meeting Hearn had been tem- 
pered with a healthy curiosity as to the reasons of his 
being comfortably settled inside the limits of the 
Angell Christmas party. 

Hearn would have chosen something different. 
All summer long, he had been seeing Teresa daily, 
seeing her in the informal setting of camp life, 
where one day goes as far, in making acquaintance 
grow towards friendship, as do a dozen days in 
town. From the very start, he and Teresa had 
been the best sort of friends. He had mourned 
quite openly over her departure. He had wel- 
comed his winter holiday, because he knew he 
would drag out of it a chance to get a glimpse of 
her in her own home. With Hearn, friends were 

195 


196 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


friends, and lasting. However, he confessed to 
himself that he had a vague hope this might turn 
to something better — granted the chance. And 
now Ebenezer, always walking hand in hand with 
destiny, had done his frowzy best to provide that 
chance. Hearn’s great contentment knew no drop 
of alloy, not even when Teresa’s off-hand, — 

‘‘Well, hul-lo ! Where did you come from?” 
brought to him the sudden realization that, for 
her, the hour of sentiment had not yet dawned. 

In spite of her total lack of sentiment, though, 
it seemed to Hearn that he had never looked at as 
nice a girl as Teresa. Other girls might perhaps 
be prettier, perhaps be more frilly in their clothes 
and manners; but not one of them was so all- 
round. To go into details, she was almost seven- 
teen years old; she had brave brown eyes, a mop 
of yellow hair, the jolliest laugh in all the world, 
and a trick of shaking hands in a way that showed 
she meant it. Hearn had it from Buddie that she 
could cook and sew and nurse a fractious child 
through mumps and measles. His own experience 
had taught him that she could “ride and row and 
swim, could tell the truth and fight the devil” 
like any of the honest boys she chose to have for 
chums. Her chumship was worth the having, 
too. Indeed, Hearn had his hours of wishing 
Buddie did not find it quite so much so. 

“What happened?” Hearn flung her question 
back at her, as the three of them sat by the fire, 
the afternoon of Teresa’s arrival. 

“Yes. How did you come to be here, ahead 
of me ? ” 


AT CHRISTMAS 


197 


‘‘Ebenezer brought him.” Buddie, squatting on 
the rug, left off prodding the fire, long enough to 
answer. 

“Ebenezer brought me! Well, I like that!” 
Hearn protested. “When Chub tells me you had 
been shedding salty tears over his loss ! ” 

“Oh !” Teresa said, as light began to dawn. 

“Yes, o^,” Hearn echoed. “That was what I 
thought about it, when I met him.” 

“Where did you meet him ?” 

“At the wrong end of a rope. A being, in a very 
bad hat and leaky boots, was dragging him along 
Forty-Second Street.” 

“And you knew him.?” Teresa shut her hands 
excitedly. She too loved Ebenezer, loved him 
almost as much as Buddie did. 

“He knew me, loyal little beggar! I didn’t 
pay any great attention to him, till he called to me, 
regularly called, barking and whining and tugging 
like mad to get to me.” 

“The darling!” Teresa said explosively. And 
then, “Buddie, you goose, you needn’t go to snif- 
fing, now it’s all over.” 

Buddie dived for his handkerchief. 

“I caught a cold, last night,” he said. “Honest, 
it isn’t Ebenezer. Just listen to me sneeze.” 

“I wouldn’t fib, if I were you,” Teresa rebuked 
him sternly. Then, “Go ahead!” she ordered 
Hearn. 

“You don’t give me any chance.” But Hearn 
nestled a little deeper in his chair, as he launched 
into his tale. “It was Tuesday, the morning I 
got here. My train came in at seven-thirty, and 


198 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


I meant to look up the doctor and Buddie, before 
I went away.” 

“ Where Buddie demanded suddenly. 

The firelight, or something else, shone red on 
Hearn’s cheeks. 

‘T had planned to run up into New England, 
for a day or two,” he said. 

“Oh.” Buddie clashed the tongs. “Going?” 
he asked crisply. 

For a minute, Hearn’s eyes rested expressively 
upon Teresa. 

“Not just now,” he said. 

“Go on,” Teresa ordered. 

“To New England?” Hearn’s accent was cajol- 
ing. 

No cajolery was in Teresa’s answering accent, 
though. 

“With your story, silly. Get down to facts, 
not waste perfectly good time, fishing for compli- 
ments.” 

Hearn yawned. 

“Do stop bullying,” he urged. “Besides, there 
isn’t any especial story. I was just hanging around, 
after my breakfast, waiting till it was time to come 
up here for a morning call, when I met Ebenezer. 
As I say, he called me, just literally called to me 
to help him out of some bad scrape. Talk ! And 
the lock of hair that ought to have been a tail : it 
filled in all the pauses. The man couldn’t give 
me any fair answer, when I asked him how he came 
to have the dog. I told him I would cuff him, if 
he didn’t come to the house with me, and prove 
property. He made a great row; but I called an 


AT CHRISTMAS 


199 


officer, and then the man let go the rope, and bolted. 
You should have seen the dog, once he was loose ! 
The policeman won’t need to wash his face again 
for at least a week. Ebenezer did it for him.” 

“Splendid !” Teresa bent down to pat the pile 
of gray wool cuddled beside Buddie. “And then 
what ? ” 

Hearn’s laugh shook the room. 

“Miss Myles, sitting down, plunk, on the floor,” 
he said. “You’ve no idea how funny it was, Teresa. 
She is so very decent, and so fat and solemn. I 
suppose I must have rung the bell a little harder 
than was quite polite. Anyhow, she looked quite 
flustered, when she opened the door and stood in 
the crack of it, puffing. I had the rope on Eben- 
ezer ; but, just the minute the door opened, I couldn’t 
hold him. He bounced in and up the stairs to look 
for Buddie, and — Well, Miss Myles was in the 
way. That’s all.” Hearn halted on his sudden 
climax. 

“Daddy has had new braces put under the hall 
floor, where it was sagging,” Buddie remarked, 
for the benefit of whom it might concern. “Miss 
Myles is very solid. Likewise, she busted all the 
back of her gown. You’ve popped rose leaves; 
haven’t you, bashing them down hard on the back 
of your other hand ? Well, then.” 

Hearn digressed. 

“Where is Little-by-Little ” he asked Teresa. 

It was Buddie, though, who answered. 

“Out with Chub, somewhere or other.” 

Hearn nodded. 

“It is well. They’ll keep each other out of 


200 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


mischief. Else, they might riot. I say, Teresa, 
how ever came you to have such a brother ? ” 

“Eric is a good boy,” Teresa defended him. 
“Precisely. That is the very reason I was asking 
you. I knew it, the very minute I saw the way 
his hair behind his ears kinks forward. That’s 
why I call him Little-by-Little ; he looks like a 
Sunday-school book in a checked cloth binding. 
And really now,” Hearn eyed Teresa narrowly; 
“you know it doesn’t run in the family.” 

“That’s the reason we are so proud of having a 
single specimen,” she retorted. Then she added 
a question on her own account. “Buddie, how 
are you getting on with Chubbie Neal 

Buddie laid down the tongs and huddled his 
knees within his encircling arms. 

“Ask me something easy,” he said then. 

Teresa looked down at him keenly. Then, be- 
cause she was Teresa, and because she knew Bud- 
die like a book, and also because she knew the 
exact sort and amount of his liking for her, she 
decided to postpone her investigations until some 
time when Hearn was not sitting by. Hearn, 
however, had not come east for nothing. Teresa’s 
opportunity did not come, until the morning after 
Christmas, three days later. 

It had been a wonderful Christmas, they all 
had agreed at bedtime, the night before. It had 
been not only Christmas, and festive upon that 
account; but it also had been a grand reunion of 
their summer camping party. As Buddie had said, 
when Kent’s coming had crowned their Christmas 
Eve, only Indian Bill and Chang were missing; 


AT CHRISTMAS 


201 


and Miss Myles was doing her conscientious best 
to make good Chang’s vacant place. 

Just how Miss Myles had worked out her prob- 
lem of belt pins and of penholders was a mystery. 
It took her half of one morning; it took it, as the 
phrase is, out of her quite badly. In the end, 
though, she accomplished it, with the aid of sundry 
cots, and of pledges of secrecy which she extracted, 
willy-nilly, from Buddie and from Tom. To be 
sure, Hearn was sharing a single bed with Eric 
Hamilton whose claim to the Little-hy-Little was 
made good by the way he absorbed more and more 
of the blankets, as the night wore on. To be sure, 
too, no one ever knew where or how Miss Myles 
passed those seven nights. Urged by Aunt Julia 
to divulge the secret, Miss Myles shook her yellow 
head, and smiled, and folded her lips. When 
she unfolded them, she quoted poetry, hymns con- 
cerning sleep; and then she shook her head, and 
went away. Buddie looked on, and smiled. Later, 
he expressed his theory that Miss Myles slept in 
the coal-bin. Not that it would have made much 
difference, though. The need of providing for 
such a household would have shortened her nights 
to the vanishing point, in any case. 

No one besides Aunt Julia, though, knew just 
how well she did provide for them. Trust Aunt 
Julia for finding out such things, and then for 
saying the short word of appreciation that helps 
along ! It was a happy Miss Myles who went 
to her mysterious bed on Christmas Eve. 

It was no one but Aunt Julia, too, who realized 
that Buddie, just in common decency, must run 


202 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


in to have a word with Porter, that same Christmas 
Eve. What was more, she ran in with him; and 
Porter, bored to death now that his convalescence 
had reached the inevitable stage where it appeared 
to be marking time: Porter explained to all later 
comers that the main fact of his Christmas had 
been his call from Buddie’s aunt. No wonder 
Buddie talked about her endlessly ! She was 
a — And Porter halted, searching for a proper 
word. 

To Buddie’s surprise. Aunt Julia had liked Porter 
on sight, liked him for himself, not just because 
she was sorry for him. 

“He’s the right sort, Buddie,” she said, as they 
were walking home through the Park. “I think 
you won’t be sorry you’ve been a little good to 
him. Yes,” for Buddie tried to interrupt; “you 
have been good to him, and, just at the first, I 
know it must have gone against the grain. But 
he is more of a man than he seems, Buddie. He 
must be, to have come out so well, after all his 
spoiling. A woman like Mrs. Porter would drive 
most boys to curling tongs and silk petticoats, to 
say nothing of the Algy Valentine.” Her accent 
was indescribable. Then she laughed. Then she 
added, “But he’s coming through it, never fear. 
I’d like to see your Madge.” 

“Come along now,” Buddie invited her. 

She shook her head. 

“I wish I could ; but there isn’t time.” 

“Why not?” 

“I promised Chubbie — ” 

“Hang Chubbie !” 


AT CHRISTMAS 


ws 


Aunt Julia slid her hand into Buddie’s arm. 

“That’s not your usual motto, Buddie?” she 
asked, with sudden serious directness. 

Buddie stared at the path ahead of him, for a 
minute. Then he turned his honest, snubnosed 
face directly to his aunt. 

“For a fact. Aunt Julia, I don’t know but it has 
been,” he admitted slowly. 

“Then change,” she bade him. After a little, 
she added, “Buddie, do you ever realize that it 
is easier for you to go three quarters of the way 
than it is for Tom to go the other quarter ?” 

After that, they walked the length of the Mall 
in silence. When they came out upon the Plaza, — 

“I’ll try it out. Aunt Julia,” Buddie said soberly. 

That, of itself, would have been enough, without 
a helpful word from Teresa. None the less, she 
spoke one. 

It was on the morning after Christmas, when 
she and Buddie were breakfasting alone. After 
a festive Christmas the like of which he had never 
known till then, even the energetic Hearn frankly 
confessed to being jaded, and he followed the example 
of his elders in sleeping until almost noon. Eric 
was still a privileged character, by reason of the 
typhoid which had set in, during his convalescence 
from a broken bone; while, as for Tom, dynamite 
could not have hoisted him out of bed, that morning. 
Only Buddie and Teresa were indomitable. Re- 
fusing to be downed by the merry-making of the 
day before, they were breakfasting in solitary 
splendour. However, it ought to be confessed that 
they talked more than they breakfasted, and that 


204 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


they felt a most unusual need of sitting with their 
elbows on the table. 

It was their first good chance to talk together. 
There had been Hearn, and there also had been 
Aunt Julia. Not that these others had made any 
real difference between them, though, beyond the 
need that they should bide their time for actual 
confidences. 

Now at last the confidences came ; both together, 
at the start, then alternately, with the other listen- 
ing. Teresa told about her life at home, since the 
camp experience had ended. She kept back many 
of the details; but Buddie could supply them out 
of his knowledge gained in the months that he had 
lived next door. He could imagine all the petty 
grind of monotorx^us daily living, without much 
money to spend on treats, and with eight or nine 
young brothers, ranging from a fretful baby up to 
Eric who was really ill, and so forgivable for being 
more or less a trial. What was more, he could 
imagine just how pluckily Teresa had played her 
part in helping out the home, a simple, humdrum 
part, but no less great for that. Listening, assent- 
ing, he was busy filling in the gaps that she left 
vacant, busier still in thanking the Providence that 
had given him such a friend. 

And then Buddie told. He told about the home 
journey, and the shipwreck, and school, and Eben- 
ezer’s learning to roll over, and football, and Porter, 
and Madge. 

“Only she isn’t a little bit like you,” he explained, 
at the finish. 

Teresa rejoiced at the only. For the present. 


AT CHRISTMAS 


205 


Buddie had first place in her affection. Later? 
It was too soon to tell. At not-quite-seventeen, 
day dreams concern more practical details than the 
proper rating of one’s friends, in order down the 
line. And many another Christmas reunion was 
stretching out ahead of Buddie and Teresa. Suf- 
ficient unto them were the secrets they would 
bring ! 

In the end of all things, as a matter of course, 
they came around to the subject of Chubbie Neal. ' 

“You see, I was talking to him, all the time you 
and Miss Julia were at Algy Porter’s,” Teresa 
added, in explanation of certain of her earlier ques- 
tions. 

Buddie nodded. 

“So I gathered,” he observed. 

“Well.” Teresa spoke slowly, her eyes upon 
the wigwam she was building out of all the extra 
teaspoons. 

“Well?” Buddie made a wry face. “Chub 
isn’t exactly — er — normal ; but I am slowly 
coming to the conclusion that it’s rather up to me.” 

Teresa looked up sharply. 

“So much the better. He won’t,” she said a 
little enigmatically. Then, “How do you mean?” 
she asked. 

Buddie plumped his elbows on the table, and 
scowled at his clasped hands. 

“This,” he said. “I swallowed Porter like a 
pill. Now it’s next to swallow Chub. Porter — 
Well, he hasn’t been exactly bad for me, and perhaps 
a dose of Chub won’t do me any harm. Anyhow, 
it’s about time I tried.” 


206 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


There came a short silence. Then, — 

“Buddie, you always were a little trump,” Teresa 
told him. “But — Yes, I think it is. And, if I 
ever can be of any use, just let me know.” 

And then, because she was Teresa, she abruptly 
changed the subject. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


BEING A BROTHER 

T he swallowing began, the very next week. 

Unhappily it ended in something close akin 
to choking. 

“Oh, Chub!” Buddie roared, one afternoon 
when he had come in from a long conference with 
Theo. 

“Yes?” Tom’s answer came with flat indif- 
ference. 

“Where are you ?” 

“In the library.” 

“Busy?” 

“Yes.” 

“What doing?” 

“Mm — er— ” 

“Hh?” 

“Writing.” 

“Who — to?” Buddie’s sentence was clipped 
in two by the physical effort of kicking off his over- 
shoes. 

“Nobody.” 

“What’s the use of writing, then?” Buddie, 
his hands in his trouser pockets, went lounging 
towards the library, as he put the question. 

The question was pertinent ; but it brought 
no answer. Buddie halted on the threshold, 
1207 


208 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


and looked in. Tom was sitting by the table, his 
pen poised above a perfectly blank sheet of 
paper. His face was rather red, and his eyes 
looked guilty. 

“Is that what you call writing letters?” Buddie 
queried, as, his fists still in his pockets, he saun- 
tered forward to the other side of the table. 

Tom turned even redder. 

“It — er — At least — ” 

Then Buddie’s tact forsook him. 

“Bet it’s another poem !” he observed. 

Tom showed some testiness. 

“What if ’tis?” he demanded. “It’s none of 
your business ; is it ?” 

Buddie forgot the virtuous resolutions which had 
caused him to lift his voice in friendly greeting, 
when he came inside the front door. 

“Mercifully not!” he said. “I’d hate to have 
it.” 

Tom grew more testy. Also, which was far 
more upsetting, he grew superior. 

“You needn’t worry,” he reassured Buddie. 

“I don’t,” Buddie answered shortly. Then, hook- 
ing his toe around the leg of the nearest chair, he 
drew it forward with an angry scrape, plumped 
himself down opposite Tom, plumped his elbows 
on the table and sat there, glowering at his friend. 

For a time, Tom pretended a disdainful uncon- 
sciousness of any presence but his own. Then he 
began to fidget. 

Buddie saw the fidgeting, and was pleased. 

“Well ?” he said, after it seemed to him to have 
done a little chastening work. 


BEING A BROTHER 


209 


Tom lifted up his eyes. 

“ What d’you want ” he asked. 

Buddie smiled, but the smile had no part in his 
good resolutions. 

“To see you do it,” he said gently. 

“Do what?” 

“Write a poem.” Buddie put his chin on his 
fists, and smirked like a veritable cherub. “I’ve 
always thought it would be bully to sit by, and 
watch a poet while he’s working.” 

Tom felt he had reached the limits where endur- 
ance ceases to be virtuous. 

“Shut up !” he ordered. 

Buddie wiped away his smile, in careful imita- 
tion of the Graeme butler. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I forgot you want it 
quiet.” 

“But I don’t !” Tom snapped. 

Forthwith, Buddie began to whistle. Tom en- 
dured the whistling in an exasperated silence, 
until Buddie came to a seventh verse of Boola. 
Then he burst out, — 

“What in thunder do you want, Buddie ?” 

Buddie finished his eighth verse, ending with a 
fiourish which might have driven the original com- 
poser mad with envy. Then, — 

“Beg pardon ?” he inquired affably. 

“You called me ?” 

“Yes.” 

“What did you want ?” 

“You, Thomas.” Buddie garnished his lips with 
a new sort of smile, carefully made and expressing 
friendliness. 


210 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“What did you want of me?” Tom suppressed 
a momentary longing to pitch Buddie out of the 
nearest window. 

Buddie gazed at him languishingly. 

“The pleasure of your company, little chum.” 

Then he stiffened, startled. The wooden pen- 
holder snapped in two, and the sheet of paper was 
crunched to a ball between Tom’s angry fingers. 

“Oh, go hang !” Tom said, and his tone showed 
that he meant it. 

Buddie had seen boys lose their tempers before; 
but this was different. They got healthily and com- 
fortably “mad”; Tom was in a blinding rage, his 
hands unsteady, the colour coming and going in his 
cheeks. And all for a little bit of teasing ! What 
an awful row about a trifle ! Buddie began to feel 
uneasy as to consequences; yet, out of the uneasi- 
ness, there was born a new respect for Tom. Up 
to that hour, Buddie had supposed it would be quite 
impossible to strike a spark from anything so soft. 
Was there, after all, a backbone of flint, of real 
resistance, inside of Chubbie Neal ? 

“I say — ” he was beginning vaguely. 

Tom pushed his words aside. 

“You’ve talked enough,” he said thickly. Then 
he turned to the door. 

With a leap, Buddie was ahead of him, barring 
the way. 

“Not much!” he said. “You’ve got to cool 
down a little, first.” 

Tom’s chin rose in the air. 

“Buddie, I want to go.” 

“What for ?” 


BEING A BROTHER 


211 


“None of your business.” Toni’s voice was level, 
cold, upon the words. “Let me out.” 

Buddie hesitated, dimly aware that he had met 
his master, dimly aware that, for all Tom’s wrath 
was absurdly out of proportion to its cause, he him- 
self was in the wrong. What was more, with 
Buddie, the first dim awareness was almost always 
the sign of penitence. In that one fact lay Buddie’s 
claim to greatness. 

“Honest, Tom, I didn’t mean to make you mad,” 
he said downrightly. “I was only trying to have 
a little fun with you ; I never thought of getting you 
into such a rage.” 

Tom shut his lips, and looked, not at, but through, 
him. Then, — 

“Please let me out,” he repeated slowly. 

“Oh, come now ! ” 

Then Buddie stood aside. Something within him 
told him that it would be no use to reason with Tom, 
just then. Instead, once Tom had vanished up the 
stairs, he took himself in search of Aunt Julia. 

That wisest of women was busy with a teacup and 
an evening paper. She was quite alone ; the paper 
was interesting and the tea was good. Neverthe- 
less, Aunt Julia forgot them both, when she looked 
up to see Buddie’s troubled face appearing in the 
open doorway. 

“Come and sit down,” she bade him cheerily, for 
experience had taught her that Buddie would explain 
the cause of his worriment when he was ready, and 
not till then. 

This time he was ready without any great delay. 

“Blow the books!” he said glumly, as he cast 


212 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


himself on the rug at his aunt’s feet. “Also blow 
Teresa ! ” 

“Buddie ! ” Aunt Julia stared at him in surprise. 
Up to now, Buddie had never expressed such heresy 
as concerned Teresa. 

The heresy continued. 

“Yes, I know; but I don’t care!” Buddie de- 
fended himself. “That girl has landed me in an 
awful mess.” 

Deliberately Aunt Julia folded up her paper and 
flung it across to the table. Deliberately she set 
down her half -empty cup. Then she drew her chair 
a little nearer the rug where Buddie sat in a discon- 
tented huddle of elbows and knees and tousled head. 

“Did she know what she was doing?” Aunt 
Julia asked, after a minute. 

“How should I know? And the books, the 
goody-goody ones, all say the same thing,” Buddie 
explained gloomily. “They’re all of them precious 
fools.” 

“Teresa, too ? ” Aunt Julia kept all but the 
narrowest edge of rebuke out of her voice. 

Buddie relented a little. 

“We-el, I’m not so sure about Teresa. Any- 
how, she probably meant well,” he conceded grudg- 
ingly. “Still, I’m not so sure that makes much 
difference, after all.” 

“Not unless — ” Aunt Julia felt it was her duty 
to say something. Buddie plainly expected it of 
her. She was just making up her mind to put the 
downright question, when Buddie saved her the 
necessity. 

“It’s all just so much twaddle,” he remarked at 


BEING A BROTHER 


213 


the andirons; “this talking about being intimate, 
and sharing the interests of your family, and all that. 
IVe tried it, and I know. After this, my family can 
go to grass, for all I care.” 

Once more Aunt Julia looked startled. This time 
she felt she had reason. 

“Buddie ! ” she remonstrated. 

Buddie flung her a smile. 

“I don’t mean you. Aunt Julia, nor Daddy.” 
Then he added darkly, “Nor Miss Myles.” 

Little as Ke meant it, Buddie’s tone was funny. 
Aunt Julia laughed suddenly. 

“Poor Ebenezer!” she said. “What has he 
been doing ?” 

But Buddie turned on her. 

“No sense in pretending. Aunt Julia. I’m in 
earnest now, not any fooling. Besides, you’ve got 
to get me out of it, for you helped get me in.” 

“In what?” No wonder that Aunt Julia felt a 
little dazed by Buddie’s abrupt shifting of respon- 
sibility for his unknown trouble ! No wonder, either, 
that she began to be somewhat curious as to what the 
trouble really was. 

She found out. 

“Tom,” Buddie said shortly. 

“What about him ? ” 

A sudden something, very like a grin, played over 
Buddie’s features. 

“Nothing; only I’ve been trying to be a brother 
to him, and make his interests my own.” And Bud- 
die’s petulance broke up in laughter. 

Then Aunt Julia knew the time was ripe for the 
direct question. Buddie had not shared her house 


214 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


and home, during nine long months, for nothing. 
Aunt Julia had gained in wisdom, at the finish of the 
time. 

“Buddie, what has happened?’’ she asked him. 
“Have you and Tom been having — ” 

“’Ructions?” Buddie completed her phrase. 
“Yes’m.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Buddie looked up quickly. 

“Honestly, I wasn’t to blame,” he said. 

“But I’m sorry, just the same,” his aunt told him 
quietly. 

“At least, not all,” Buddie modified his earlier 
defence 

“What happened ? ” 

Buddie let go his clasp upon his knees, straight- 
ened out his legs and shut his hands upon his ankles. 
With bowed head, he spoke thoughtfully. 

“You see, you and Teresa have been so everlast- 
ingly worked up about Chub,” he said; “that some- 
how or other I had it borne in on me that I hadn’t 
been doing my duty by him, that I’d sort of let him 
go his way. I hadn’t meant to, honestly. Aunt 
Julia.” The laugh had entirely vanished now ; 
Buddie’s eyes, fixed on the fire, were very grave. 
“It was just that, once he was landed here and 
started off in school, I didn’t think so very much 
about him, one way or the other. He doesn’t like 
my kind of things, and I’ll be hanged if I can discover 
the kind of things he cares about. We’re just as 
different as two peas.” Buddie fell silent, staring 
at the fire. 

Aunt Julia let him take his time. Confidences, 


BEING A BROTHER 


215 


to be good for anything, must be given, not dragged 
out. She waited. 

“’Seems as if I’d have died, if you hadn’t promised 
Daddy you’d stay on here, for a while ! ” Buddie 
burst out irrelevantly, at length. 

She ventured a crisp little pat on the nearer 
shoulder. 

“Thank you, Buddie,” she said. “And I’ve 
missed you.” 

When Buddie spoke again, he had relaxed his 
clasp upon his ankles, and had snuggled backwards 
to rest against Aunt Julia’s knees. 

“Seems like old times, sort of; doesn’t it?” he 
asked contentedly. 

She stroked his hair. 

“They were good old times, too, Buddie.” 

His chuckle came again. 

“Remember that first day, when Ebenezer had 
tea with Pet-Lamb ? ” he queried. “Jolly smash 
of teacups, that ! And Ebenezer ate up all the 
sugar.” He pondered. “Just us, and Teresa,” 
he added thoughtfully. “We had great times, for 
sure.” 

Aunt Julia let his memories have their way,"^sure 
that, in time, they would lead him back into the 
present. They did it sooner than she had expected. 
Buddie sat up straight once more. 

“Queer what notions girls take ! ” he said bluntly. 
“That Teresa, just the other day, told me I’d been 
a beastly pig with Tom. You told me the same 
thing, too.” Turning, he gave his aunt a rebuking 
glance which set her to ransacking the corners of 
her conscience. 


216 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“I, Buddie?” 

“Yes. Of course, not in those very words; but 
that was the gist of it. It was the day we’d been to 
see Porter.” Buddie digressed sharply. “Porter 
is an encyclopedia and a monkey-show combined, 
compared to Tom. But, anyhow, you got after me, 
and then Teresa, and then I read a lot of those books 
I had, Christmas, the story ones. They were futile 
stuff, school and football and Eskimos and tigers 
written by people that didn’t know anything but to 
do their hair, and tea. But they all harped on the 
same string, just as you and Teresa had been doing.” 

Aunt Julia had a moment of extreme penitence 
that she had let herself become so great a bore. 
Buddie swept on, for now he was warming to his 
theme. 

“And I suppose I was tired, and had eaten too 
much plum pudding. Anyhow, I got on my nerves. 
There was Chub, kicking around in the way, no more 
use than a bag of beans, and not caring about any- 
thing in particular. And I’d been finding out that 
Porter, once you really tackled him, wasn’t such an 
awful proposition, after all. Really, if he holds out, 
once he is on his legs again, we’ll make a little man 
of him. And I was the chap who found it out, just 
me, myself ! ” Buddie lapsed into musings born of 
self-pleasure. “Porter isn’t a bad lot,” he repeated 
finally. “Once the conceit gets batted out of him 
a little bit, he’ll do.” 

Buddie’s pause showed that he was waiting for 
assent. His aunt gave it, and heartily. 

“I liked him,” she said. 

“Ditto, only I make it in the present tense. The 


BEING A BROTHER 


217 


question now is for the other fellows. IVe got to 
cram him down their throats, next thing I do. I’ll 
manage it, though, in time.” Then Buddie swept 
on into his present problems. “I suppose I got a 
little stuck up about myself. Anyhow, I thought 
I’d try it out on Chub.” 

“And ?” For the life of her. Aunt Julia dared 
put no more definite query. Buddie’s narrative, 
it seemed to her, left a good deal to the imagination. 

“And he went into an awful rage, and told me to 
mind my business.” Buddie had no idea of being 
untruthful in his climax. It only seemed to him 
that he was giving a condensed account of the late 
unpleasantness. 

“Strange ! ” Aunt Julia appeared to be thinking 
out loud. “It doesn’t seem like Chubbie. How — ” 
She hesitated. 

“I just told him I’d sit by, and watch him,” Bud- 
die explained. 

“What was he doing ? ” 

Buddie’s left eye narrowed slightly. 

“Writing a poem,” he answered. 

And then Aunt Julia understood. 

“But you were cross, you know,” she argued, with 
a laugh, when she found herself alone with Chubbie, 
late that same evening. 

“Didn’t he deserve it ? ” Tom challenged her. 

“I wasn’t there, Chubbie.” 

“Then how did you know about it, anyhow ? ” 

“Buddie told me.” 

Tom muttered a word. It began with a T and 
ended with a distinct ale. Otherwise, Aunt Julia 
could catch nothing. Imagination, though, coupled 


218 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


with experience of another boy, helped out her 
answer. 

“Not a bit, Chubbie; not in the sense you mean. 
Buddie did tell me something about it; but it was 
mainly to talk the matter over with himself, and see 
where the trouble really lay.” 

“Hh ! ” Tom remarked. 

Behind her hand, lifted to screen her face from the 
blazing coals. Aunt Julia frowned. That was the 
difference between the boys, a difference nothing 
on earth could ever down. Well ? She hesitated. 
Then she bent forward, her elbows resting in her 
silken lap, her chin cupped in her lace-encircled 
palms. Dainty and sweet as a girl, she faced the 
frowning boy before her. With the frank simplic- 
ity of a girl, she spoke. 

“Chubbie, listen ! ” she said. “Buddie did tease 
you unmercifully, this afternoon. He knows it 
now, and he is sorry. But were you fair to him ? 
Didn’t you lose your temper a little more than he 
deserved? Didn’t you start out with the being 
sure that he wanted to hurt you ? He didn’t. When 
he first called to you, he honestly meant to find out 
what you were doing, and do it with you.” 

She stopped long enough to catch her breath; it 
was also long enough to catch an impatient murmur 
from Tom. 

“Didn’t want him ? ” she echoed quickly. “That’s 
the very trouble, the very thing Buddie has been 
worrying about. He has worried, even though he 
would have died, rather than let you see it.” 

“Worry! He lets me go my way,” Tom pro- 
tested a little sullenly. 


BEING A BROTHER 


219 


Then Aunt Julia caught him, turning his very 
grievance to an accusation. 

“Well, why not? Have you ever tried to go his 
way with him ? Why not say you have left him to 
go his own ? ” Then she dropped her unaccustomed 
sharpness, and spoke more gently. “Chubbie dear, 
hasn’t a little of the fault been yours? Haven’t 
you felt that Buddie ought to do it all, to fit himself 
and his life into your ways, while you made no 
change for him ? After all, it was you who came 
here into his ready-made life, not he into yours. 
Since I came, I’ve been watching to see how the plan 
worked out. I am fond of you both; you both are 
my nephews. But it does seem to me that you have 
expected to come here into Buddie’s home, his old 
home where he has been the only one to be consid- 
ered until now, and just to sit back and wait for 
Buddie to make things nice for you, instead of once 
in a while thinking how you could make things nice 
for him. You aren’t a bit alike. Always, you 
probably will go your separate ways. Still, there 
ought to be any number of paths crossing back and 
forth between them, paths where you can meet and 
have good times. Only, Chubbie,” as she spoke, 
she rose to her feet, ready for the good night to 
come after; “only, Chubbie, it’s not quite fair to 
think that Buddie ought to find them all.” Then 
she held out her hand to him. “Good night, Chub- 
bie, for I must go to bed. Don’t lie awake to think 
this over, though. There always are plenty of to- 
morrows, when we really need them.” 

And, with a nod, she was gone, leaving Tom to 
ponder, long and late, before the dying fire. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

T O Buddie’s great regret, Madge and Teresa had 
not met. Madge had done her best ; but chance, 
and grippe, had prevented. Teresa had been in 
New York, just one week. On the second morning 
of her stay, the Graeme car had stopped at Dr. 
AngelFs door, and Madge had gone running up the 
steps. 

It was a good morning, and would Buddie and 
Teresa come for a ride ? 

Miss Myles echoed the fact that it was a good 
morning, and thanked her very much, and Buddie 
and Teresa had just gone for a walk. 

Did Miss Myles know where ? 

Miss Myles was sorry ; but she did not know. Was 
there any message ? 

And Madge had gone away again, only to be smit- 
ten down, next day, with that foe to humans which 
lurks in all mild winter weather. 

“She might have given me a hint,” she said venge- 
fully to Buddie, the first day she was out again. 

“That’s not Miss Myles’s way,” Buddie responded. 
“She says it isn’t manly to hint. One should speak 
out plainly and take the consequences, or else keep 
still.” 

Madge made a grimace of disgust. 

“What a mush she is !” she said inelegantly. 

220 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


221 


“Mush!” Buddie echoed. “Once let her drop 
on you, and you’ll see.” 

His accent showed that he spoke from experience. 
Madge looked up, a laugh in her brown eyes. 

“What now, Buddie ? ” 

Buddie pulled down the corners of his lips. 

“Miss Myles is very tired,” he said. “And she 
worked very hard, over Christmas.” 

“That’s your father’s version of it.” Madge 
cocked her head sidewise, like an extra intelligent 
cockatoo. “I suppose it’s his way of explaining her 
bad tempers,” she added shrewdly. 

Buddie shook his head. 

“Miss Myles doesn’t get bad temper; she just has 
force of character,” he said. 

Madge groaned. 

“Buddie Angell, wouldn’t it be a comfort, if grown- 
ups ever admitted that other grown-ups were in the 
wrong!” she burst out unexpectedly. Then she 
pulled herself up short. “Anyhow, I was sorry not 
to see Teresa.” 

“She’s worth seeing.” 

“So I judged, after all the things you’ve said about 
her.” 

“Me ? I’ve never talked about her much.” 

Madge laughed. 

“Not in words, perhaps; but you’ve just oozed 
raptures, every chance you have had. And Tom 
says she is a wonder. It was such a shame I was 
laid low. I had planned to have you all to dinner, 
you all and Algy.” 

“He’d have come ? ” 

“Of course. Why not ? ” 


222 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“I didn’t know he was able.” 

“Yes, he’s been over, half a dozen times. Didn’t 
he tell you ? After all, he hasn’t had a chance ; he 
says he hasn’t seen you for a week. Yes, he knew 
you had your hands full. Is Teresa going to marry 
Mr. Hearn ? ” 

“What !” Buddie almost exploded, in his aston- 
ishment. 

Madge rebuked him properly. 

“Don’t be so noisy in the street. And don’t be 
a blind bat, Buddie. I only just wondered. Algy 
said — ” 

“Algy would better keep his mouth shut,” Bud- 
die growled. “Teresa is nothing but a girl; it’s 
years and years before she will think about such 
things.” 

“Hm !i” Madge recorded her disagreement briefly. 
Then she digressed again. “Algy will be back in 
school, next Monday.” 

“For a fact ? ” 

“If he’s careful.” Madge’s emphasis was evi- 
dently quoted. “The doctor says it won’t hurt 
him any; his mother is perfectly sure he ought to 
have his breakfast in bed till Easter. They Anally 
compromised on his going late, and driving both 
ways. I imagine, though, it won’t be long before — ” 

Buddie nodded, to show his comprehension of the 
flnish of her phrase. Then he cut it off, unspoken. 

“He’s changed a lot, Madge.” 

“And improved. I couldn’t bear him, till just 
lately.” 

“Maybe the improvement is in you,” Buddie 
suggested unkindly. 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


223 


“Wait till he’s back in school, and then ask the 
boys,” she challenged him,. “He isn’t the same 
Algy he was, two months ago.” 

And so the boys found out, once Porter was back 
in his old place at school. The first day, they wel- 
comed him with calm politeness. Their memory of 
his gallant stand against the Lawrenceville rush line 
was tempered by their discovery that his stick was 
silver-mounted, and that his mother drove to school 
with him, mornings. The boys meant well; they 
did their level best to carry out their good intentions. 
However, thanks to an injudicious mother. Porter 
even now had a few things to live down. 

Madge, in the background, was quick to realize 
the fact. 

“Don’t you dare fight for him, Buddie, whatever 
comes,” she ordered, with a shrewd wisdom which 
showed her as her father’s daughter. 

“But he’s got to have a little backing,” Buddie 
urged. 

She shook her red-brown head in dauntless dis- 
approval. 

“Backing is the one thing he must not have,” she 
contradicted. “That has been the trouble, all along ; 
he’s had too much. Put him on his legs, and give 
him one good shove; then let him walk off alone.” 

“I hate to watch him limp,” Buddie said soberly. 
“Under it all, I like him.” 

“He won’t limp, after the first step or two,” 
Madge reassured him. “He’ll stiffen up, if you give 
him half a chance. He’s always had somebody to 
boost him and coddle him, and it’s made a perfect 
idiot of him. What he needs now is to be shown 


224 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


something he wants badly, and then to have it put 
down, a long way ahead of him. Once he finds that 
nobody is going to help him get it, you’ll find he will 
walk off after it in a hurry.” 

And so it proved. 

The something was the success of the new paper. 
As a matter of course, hockey would be out of the 
question for Porter, all that winter ; the gymnasium 
would be shut to him. And he must have interest 
of some sort, outside of lesson hours. Two months 
of sugary feminine society at home had taught him 
the value of boys of almost any sort, even of the 
rather ungroomed kind who were likely to choose 
a fountain pen to a tennis racket or a glove; had 
taught him likewise that, for the sake of winning 
their society, it was well worth his while to give up 
certain other things that he had thought essen- 
tials. Boys, to Porter’s mind just then, were boys, 
and valuable accordingly. Moreover, even a paper 
could be managed well. Active athletics forbidden 
to him for the present, he would take the next best 
thing in line. 

Rather to the surprise of everybody, even Buddie, 
he took it well. Always he had had a natural ear 
for English, a too natural grace in phrasing things 
politely. Always he had shown a natural sense for 
business. And the very qualities which would over- 
balance these and stand in his way, his arrogance, 
his tactless trick of treating his fellows as inferiors 
of one sort or another, his self-assurance whatever 
the emergency: these either had been knocked out 
of him completely by the discipline of his mates, all 
autumn, or else they were the object of his own at- 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


225 


tempts to down them. Porter’s accident had come 
in the very nick of time for his redemption. It had 
taken the stiffening out of him more than a little ; it 
had given him time to think things over, all sorts of 
things, among them the secret of his personal stand- 
ing in the school. Earlier, it would have lacked its 
value, lacking also the bad experience of an absolute 
unpopularity for which he really was but half re- 
sponsible. Later, it might have found him bitter, 
and so hopeless for all time. It was a new Porter 
who went up the stairs to Father Gibson’s classroom, 
that January morning. 

He went down them, two hours later, feeling bet- 
ter than he ever had done in all his life. Father 
Gibson had kept him after class, inquiring about the 
condition of his broken bone, advising about the 
best way to make up the omitted work of the last 
weeks, and then, as man to man, planning with him 
about the new paper on which the work was now to 
be started in good earnest. 

“It’s the best time to be starting it. Porter,” 
Father Gibson added, at the last. “Athletics are 
slack just now ; and the boys will take it with a rush, 
just at the first. You ought to have three good 
months ahead of you, before spring opens. By that 
time, you can make good, and work out a staff that 
will stand by you, even against the rival attractions 
of the nine, this spring.” 

Porter looked dubious. 

“Easy to say. Father Gibson,” he objected; “but 
not a bit easy to do.” 

“Then all the better worth your doing,” Father 
Gibson retorted coolly. “If you have any claim 


226 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


to greatness, Porter, it’s sure to be in leading a for- 
lorn hope.” 

Porter nodded his dutiful acceptance of an intended 
compliment which did not especially appeal to him. 
Then he turned to go away. Father Gibson called 
him back. 

“If you need a helper, try young Neal,” he sug- 
gested. 

“Is he any good ? ” 

Father Gibson sat, for just a minute, staring into 
the face before him. It was a handsome face, but 
less cocksure and smiling than it used to be. One 
looked into the eyes now, not at them; there were 
sterner lines around the lips. Porter’s convalescence 
had not been confined merely to his broken leg ; the 
betterment was showing throughout all his make- 
up. Father Gibson studied him thoughtfully, re- 
solved that the hour had come for a new stimulant, 
the best one which can be given to any boy : the 
sense of personal responsibility for another’s growth. 

“Not yet,” he said deliberately, in reply to Por- 
ter’s question. “I’m only offering you the chance 
to make him so.” 

Tom, meanwhile, was privately resolving to have 
a hand in his own making. Accordingly, about the 
middle of that same evening, he descended upon 
Buddie. His purpose was not altogether single. 
Mingled with the ideals which he had thought out, 
since his talk with Aunt Julia, was no small amount of 
anxiety as to his own chances of getting on the edi- 
torial board of the new paper. Rumour had it that 
Buddie held the paper in the hollow of his hand. 
Tom felt it was his right, as Buddie’s housemate. 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


227 


to pry open the hand and see exactly what it was 
that lay inside. Prying, he could use to good advan- 
tage the moral lever suggested by Aunt Julia. So 
much the better, if his improvement lay along the 
line of his getting his desires ! 

“Oh, Buddie!” 

“Ya-aes?” 

“Where are you ? ” 

“Here.” 

Tom appeared on the threshold and took a look. 
The prospect was not encouraging. Buddie, his 
heels higher than his head, was sprawling at full 
length on the cpuch. He had answered Tom’s hail, 
without troubling himself to turn his eyes from the 
magazine held in the air above him. The magazine 
contained a specious recipe for the manufacture of 
home-made skis. Tom, though, being unaware of 
that fact, was unable to excuse. 

“I say,” he began. Then the words stuck in his 
throat. In all the world, there is nothing more self- 
conscious than a would-be poet, whether he be fif- 
teen or fifty. 

“Say it, then,” Buddie bade him blandly. Then 
he turned a leaf. 

Tom stared at him in dumb discouragement, 
wondering how, for all her fabled wisdom. Aunt 
Julia would meet the situation. Buddie, to all 
appearing, was quite forgetful of the presence of his 
friend. With the magazine held corner wise above 
his head and his head held cornerwise below the 
magazine, he was studying out one of the diagrams, 
trying in vain to find any logical connection between 
the A. and B. Suddenly, though, — 


228 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Speak, Thomas ! ” he ordered. 

The suddenness drove every idea out of Tom’s 
self-conscious brain. 

“Oh — er — Nothing,” he said. 

“All right. Then keep still,” Buddie bade him 
cheerily, and, righting the angle of the magazine, he 
turned another leaf. 

Tom crossed the room and sat down by the table. 
Seated, he clasped his fingers and stared accusingly 
at the nails. Once or twice, he cleared his throat 
and opened his mouth to speak. Then he changed 
his mind again. An observer, sitting by, would have 
said he was trying out some new form of gymnastics 
for the strengthening of his jaws. 

“Oh, I say ! What a scheme !” 

Tom started out of his meditations with a jerk. 
Buddie had cast his magazine upon the fioor and, 
with his hands clasped behind his head, appeared to 
be drawing charts with his toes against an invisible 
background. Suddenly mindful of Aunt Julia, 
Tom did his best to put on a look of sprightly interest. 

“What is ? ” 

Buddie finished out his diagram. Then, — 

“The way that fellow went about it,” he explained 
lucidly. “It’s as easy as eating a piece of lemon pie. 
You take a length of board, ten feet long or so, and you 
soak one end of it in hot water, till you can bend it 
any way you like. Then you wire it into place, you 
know. All you need is a bit of picture wire and a 
couple of staples, all drawn taut. As soon as it gets 
dry, you slit a piece out of an old boot, and tack it 
across the middle, for the toe-strap, and nail a 
little cleat behind it to steady the heel. Then you 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


229 


grease the whole thing with melted fat to make it 
slide, and there you are.” 

“Of course !/’ Tom hoped his extreme emphasis 
would atone for his total ignorance as to what Buddie 
was really talking about. 

Apparently it did, for, — 

“And they’re any amount safer than the tie-on 
kind,” Buddie went on, with mounting enthusiasm. 
“This fellow says the whole point of skiing is the 
being able to jump free, once you strike a snag. 
Else, you either break your ankle, or fall on your 
nose and drag. With this kind of a ski, you can al- 
ways save yourself. I say. Chub !/’ He lifted him- 
self on one elbow. “Let’s make some.” 

“All right.” True to his resolutions, Tom downed 
his misgivings. It did not seem to him altogether 
easy to soak one end of a ten-foot board in a boiling 
cauldron; at least, without damage to the ceiling. 
However, it was Buddie’s ceiling, not his. If Bud- 
die willed it, it might be worth attempting; and 
Buddie’s inventive genius, Tom well knew, had 
triumphed over more than one seemingly hopeless 
obstacle. “Got any boards ?” he added. 

Buddie’s answer was rendered next thing to the 
incomprehensible, by reason of his flapping search 
for the pumps that he had kicked aside. Out of the 
grunts and gurglings, though, Tom made out coal 
cellar and fry them off. Ten minutes later, the 
sound of rending wood showed that Buddie was 
carrying out his own suggestion grandly. 

“These will be the very thing,” he said, between 
his whacks. “They aren’t ten feet long, of course; 
but they’ll seem longer, once we get th,em done and 


230 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


on our feet. Besides, our snow isn’t as deep as it 
is in Norway. Catch hold here, Tom, and give it a 
jerk. I want that end to come loose, first. Else, 
we’ll have a landslide.” 

“Coal slide, you’d better say,” Tom warned him. 
“Look out, Buddie ! You may get more than you’ve 
bargained for.” 

A good share of the flying coal dust had trans- 
ferred itself to the face of Buddie, whose laugh shone 
out, a white and gleaming gash, across his smutty 
countenance. 

“No matter. It will come in handy for the paper,” 
he remarked. “You can have it to write up, among 
the crimes and casualties.” 

“The paper is really coming off, then?” It 
seemed to Tom, speaking, that his voice was hol- 
low with his effort after casualness. 

“Coming on, you’d better say. Anyhow, you 
would have said it, if you’d seen the smudge on Por- 
ter’s nose, this afternoon.” 

Prudently Tom forebore to remind his companion 
of the interchange of compliments between the pot 
and kettle. Instead, — 

“He’s managing it ?” 

“Yes.” Buddie left off whacking, and halted, 
with wrinkled brows. The future of the paper, in- 
volving, as it did. Porter’s future with it : this was 
a matter dear to Buddie’s heart, and as yet he 
could not see his way clear to its accomplishment. 
“He can’t do it alone, though, and none of the boys 
who want to help him seem to be much good. They’ll 
make the thing popular, if they take it up ; but they 
won’t make it worth the while, and a thing of that 


THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


231 


kind isn’t going to hold out long on simple popularity. 
Porter’s got to have a few greasy grinds — I say. 
Chub, why can’t you — ? ” 

“I’m not a greasy grind,” Tom objected swiftly. 
For the instant, the hideous implication blinded him 
to the fact that the coveted gift was almost in his 
grasp. 

If he expected Buddie to show penitence, he was 
mistaken in his man. Instead, Buddie chuckled. 

“No. You only have some of the traits,” he 
said. “You do like to splash about and soak your- 
self in ink, Thomas ; and you do just love to match 
up 'pin and tin, and put make the bunny groan to 
rhyme with on your funny hone, and things like that. 
Now, if you’ll only learn to write plain prose, you 
can make yourself no end of a help to Porter.” 

Boys certainly are queer things, even boys un- 
tainted by a taste for rhyming. For just a minute, 
listening to the laugh in Buddie’s voice, Tom turned 
a vivid scarlet. Then, — 

“I suppose I can try it out and see,” he said 
grudgingly. 

Buddie, his hammer poised in his lifted hand, 
nodded approval. 

“Good for you!” he said. “That’s the stuff! 
I’ll tell Porter, in the morning. Now hang on. I’ll 
give another whack, and then you seesaw up and 
down a little. So-o-o. Oh, gee- whiz ! ” 

For the predicted landslide had occurred, and in 
a wholesale fashion that would have done credit 
to the Culebra cut in its most active days. When 
the dust had settled down a little, — 

“Get along upstairs, Chub,” Buddie ordered 


232 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


him; “and open up the kitchen stove. We’ll have 
to have oodles of hot water, to soak these board 
ends. You can be filling up some kettles, while I 
shovel this mess into a corner. Daddy would skin 
us, if we left it all over the floor like this.” 

This mess was more abundant than either boy had 
thought. In consequence, it was late, that night, 
when two weary, crocky heads were laid on two 
white pillows. In more senses than one, the even- 
ing had been energetic. Its later hours had been 
marked by two contests, one with Miss Myles, one 
with the kitchen fire. In the end, so far as the boys 
were concerned, the contests had resulted in a tie. 
Miss Myles had been routed by the boys who, in 
their turn, had been routed by the kitchen fire. 
Two boards, exceeding soaky, but as unbending as 
they had been at the start, were left standing on end 
against the kitchen door, ready to entrap and guil- 
lotine the milkman on his early-morning round. 
Two tired and smutty, but indomitable youngsters 
went plodding up the front stairs, side by side, much 
too intent upon their mutual plans, plans which 
included vats of boiling water and quarts on quarts 
of printers’ ink, to pay the slightest heed to Eben- 
ezer, lumbering in the rear. 

However, once Tom’s proper psalms were ended, 
once Ebenezer had stretched himself across the foot 
of his master’s bed, each of the boys became aware, 
before he floated off to sleep, that, despite its coal 
dust and its conflicts, the evening had been well 
worth the while. 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


A POET ON SKIS 

T he weather bureau is by no means always the 
malign thing it is made out to be. Most people 
regard it as the property of a human being who keeps 
assorted weathers stored away in his bureau drawers, 
ready to be taken out, as whim dictates, and scat- 
tered helter-skelter over an undeserving public. 
But, once in a while, even they admit that it does an 
ideal thing. 

A week later, snow descended on New York, not 
the inch or two of slushy whiteness that speedily 
turns into black mud. This was the real thing, and 
there were fourteen inches of it. It took two cold, 
still days for its falling ; it lay, deep and undrifted, 
up and down the city streets and across the parks. 
What was more, it held its own completely, refus- 
ing on any account to be churned into dingy mud. 
It cleared off into a chilly yellow sunset; the next 
morning dawned on a minus six degrees which set the 
Hudson steaming like the barber of the northland. 
Best of all, it was Saturday; and everybody who 
owned a sled, or had the money to buy one : every- 
body turned his face, as a matter of course, to Cen- 
tral Park. 

The week had been a busy one to Buddie, a stren- 
uous one for poor Miss Myles. The Angell cook had 
given warning twice. The Angell furnace man had 
233 


234 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


been in a chronic state of fury. The Angell coal bin 
was shedding its contents all over the cellar floor; 
and the Angell kitchen alternately steamed with 
boiling cauldrons, or reeked with the unlovely odour 
of hot mutton fat. The fire was chronically going 
out, because Buddie, driving it at top speed, was 
never quite ready to have fresh coal put in. The 
cook wore an unbecoming bandage on one ear, 
because Buddie, in the sudden agony of a burned 
forefinger, had dropped his board with a clatter, just 
as she bent above her open oven door. And poor, 
poor Miss Myles ! Her respectable black skirt was 
barred and banded with streaks of cold mutton tal- 
low ; her proper shoes were scarred by collision with 
curly ends of wire that lurked in dim corners of the 
floor. The week, in truth, had been a strenuous 
one, very strenuous for all concerned. 

On the Wednesday night, the night before the 
snow began, Buddie had heaved a sigh, half of re- 
lief, half pride, as he had paused to feast his eyes 
upon the four strips of board standing on end against 
the kitchen wall. 

“Great, Chub ! Aren’t you glad we stuck to, and 
finished ? They are just great ! ” he said contentedly. 

And they were great, were those four skis. To 
be sure, the toes turned up at four different angles. 
To be sure, one of them had come out from its 
steaming bath so permanently warped that only a 
pigeon-toed skier could have coaxed it into taking 
any hill, toe on. Moreover, mutton fat, smeared 
irregularly over the whole bottom surface of the ski, 
is a loathly substitute for proper grooving. Never- 
theless, a trial trip across the kitchen floor had proved 


A POET ON SKIS 


235 


to the boys conclusively that only snow was lacking 
for their full content. And it was very cloudy, with 
a strong east wind. 

Side by side and little fingers hooked together, 
token of a budding intimacy born of scalded fingers 
and skinned thumbs, the two boys went clattering 
away to bed. Undressing, they prowled to and fro 
from room to room, exchanging high hopes as con- 
cerned the weather. They waked, next morning, 
to find the weather falling thick around them. Also 
they waked to find the house breakfastless. This 
time, the cook had not waited for the formality of any 
warning. She had gone. All in all, she was not so 
much to be blamed. Buddie, adding a final coat of 
mutton varnish to his skis, had promised on his 
honour that he would bank down the roaring fire 
his task demanded. The cook, whom no experience 
could make anything but trustful, where Buddie was 
concerned, had gone to bed without forebodings. 
She had waked to find the fire burned out, the 
kitchen cold, and a burst hot-water pipe spurting like 
a geyser. That the kitchen had not always been 
cold, though, was testified by the four pools of con- 
gealed fat which adorned the floor at the end of four 
bare and fatless skis. 

Miss Myles, questioned about the prospects of 
breakfast, showed herself as chilly as the kitchen. 
Daddy, though, bore up wonderfully ; his attempt at 
a rebuke ended in the merest sham. Breakfast was 
breakfast; mutton fat was mutton fat. Neverthe- 
less, the doctor felt that absence of one and excess of 
another was more than justified by certain new symp- 
toms of an honest understanding between the boys. 


236 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


For two days, starvation reigned in the Angell 
home. Miss Myles said it was because no cook 
would come out in such a storm. The doctor ac- 
cepted her excuse, and her apology for meals, with 
apparent satisfaction; but he had his doubts. He 
had gained respect for the mind and the force of 
character of Miss Myles ; he more than half suspected 
that he and the boys were under discipline. Star- 
vation is a powerful argument. And the boys cer- 
tainly had made havoc in their unheralded invasion 
of the kitchen. 

The sun set clear across the snow, on Friday. 
Saturday, it rose upon a white, white world. Bud- 
die, over the grapefruit, laid down his programme 
for the morning. 

“Not too early. Chub. We’ll wait till everybody 
is there.” 

Tom shook his head with some dubiousness. 

“I’d like a little chance to practise,” he said. 

“No need. We just get on, and go.” 

“Unless — ” 

“Not any unless about it,” Buddie proclaimed 
arrogantly. “You can’t fall off them; they’re too 
flat and slippy. And you can’t learn how to do 
them, because they do themselves. I’ve seen heaps 
of pictures. You climb on board, and you give 
yourself a poke forward with your pole, to start 
yourself, and, next you know, there you are.” 

“Where?” Daddy asked him gravely. 

“Where you want to be. Of course, you point 
them right, before you get on. It’s not fair. Daddy, 
to get Chub funky at the start. He’ll be all right, 
if he only thinks so.” 


A POET ON SKIS 


237 


And Tom, for reasons born of the past eight days, 
allowed his misgivings to be borne down entirely. 

It was eleven o’clock, that morning, when Buddie 
came out at the top of the favourite sliding place in 
Central Park. Tom came after him. Both boys 
were in caps and sweaters, and Buddie had filched 
a scarlet knitted shawl belonging to Miss Myles, and 
knotted it around his waist by way of sash. The 
skiers in the pictures always wore sashes ; also they 
always carried their skis at precisely the angle at 
which Tom and Buddie carried theirs. This angle 
had not come quite natural to either boy ; it had de- 
manded careful rehearsing. Daddy was the most 
broad-minded of men. However, after the first 
minute or two of peril to his household gods, he had 
ordained that the rehearsals must be carried on, out 
in the street. He even had gone so far as to suggest 
the back alley, as a place less fraught with danger to 
the passer-by. And Buddie, though frowning on his 
doubts, had been forced to yield. 

No frown was visible, though, when Buddie, with 
Tom behind him, came out across the snowy white- 
ness of the Park. Indeed, he took the stage, cocky 
and smiling as a king. Save for purposes of exhi- 
bition, skis were rare in Central Park. The climate 
looked out for that, the climate assisted by the price- 
lists of the sporting shops. Every kind of sled was 
on the long slope, every kind from the home-made 
runners of the slums to the latest invention of steer- 
ing gear known to the Avenue. Theo, whose aunt 
had once spent a day in a Canadian hotel, was the 
centre of a little crowd who stood about in a respect- 
ful silence, watching him flounder around on snow- 


238 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


shoes. To be sure, Theo, lacking a chance of in- 
struction from his aunt, who had expressed the shoes 
to him from the first station this side the border: 
Theo had tied them tight, tails and all, to his ordinary 
boots ; but no one in the crowd was in a position to 
be critical. Instead, they watched his flounderings, 
with a general theory that one always floundered 
upon showshoes ; and Theo felt himself the acknowl- 
edged hero of the morning’s sport. 

, Buddie, arriving tardily upon the scene, brought 
threats of disillusion. 

“Hullo, Theo!” he called affably. “How are 
you getting on, with your new shoes ? ” 

Theo, startled at the hail, trod on his own heel and 
sat down abruptly. Without rising, he turned to 
glower at Buddie. 

“All right.” 

“Rather hard work, though ? ” Buddie inquired, 
with every sign of interest, for not even his real love 
for Theo could wholly down his love of teasing. 

“Not a bit.” For reasons connected with pride, 
Theo made no immediate effort to rise to his feet 
again. Even loose and flapping tails get themselves 
into unmanageable angles, and Theo’s tails were 
securely tied. 

“Then what are you sitting down for ? ” 

Really, it was rather mean of Buddie; but some- 
thing should be forgiven him upon the score of dis- 
appointment. He had hoped to be the solitary star 
on the horizon; it was hard to find Theo there, 
twinkling ahead of him. Tom was there, too ; but 
Buddie felt sure that, in a case like this, Tom would 
not count. Theo was a different matter. Indeed, 


A POET ON SKIS 


239 


had Theo only known it, Buddie’s teasing was a 
tribute to the difference. 

Theo did not know it, though. Therefore, he 
spoke testily. 

“My shoe is coming untied. I sat down to 
fix it.” 

“Oh,” Buddie said simply. 

Still sitting, Theo stared up at his friend. 

“What you got there, Buddie ? ” 

“Skis, of course.” 

“Honest ? ” Theo was generous and enthusiastic. 
His scramble to his feet, though, resulted in disaster. 

“Wait a jiffy, till I get these on,” Buddie told him. 
“Then I’ll come down and give you a hand.” 

Theo ignored the implied criticism of his own 
agility. 

“Where did you get them, Buddie ? ” he inquired. 

“Oh, I had them,” Buddie answered loftily. Then, 
“Shut up, Chub ! ” he added, in a whisper. “I did 
have the things we made them of; didn’t I? It’s 
none of his biz how they were put together.” 

“Had ’em long ? ” Theo decided that it would be 
well to continue the subject as long as he could. Dis- 
cussion would stave off the evil day of getting on his 
feet once more. 

“Oh, so-so.” Buddie spoke in careful imitation 
of his mechanical-drawing master. “We don’t get 
too much weather for them here.” 

“Ever used them before?” 

“Not much.” Buddie was especially pleased with 
this answer. It might mean vehement denial ; it 
might mean a qualified assenting, just according to 
the listener’s point of view. 


240 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Go ahead,” Theo urged him craftily. 

Buddie showed himself still more crafty. 

“I’ll race you.” 

“Not fair ! You are fresh ; I’m tired. It wouldn’t 
be an even thing at all.” 

Buddie lowered his skis to the snow. Then he bent 
an anxious glance on the plaster of mutton fat which 
had transferred itself from one of the skis to his scarlet 
sash. He had a sudden memory of Miss Myles, and 
he tried to rub the slimy white spot away; but 
wool is sticky stuff, and knitted things are, of their 
nature, full of cracks where icy tallow can slip in 
and lodge. 

Theo took advantage of his absorption, to make 
another attempt to rise. The attempt left him prone 
upon his back, with one webbed foot spread over 
him like a leaky sunshade. Buddie saw him. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t kick about hke that; you’ll hurt 
yourself,” he advised. 

Theo’s irritation was not unnatural. 

“Bet you can’t walk, two inches,” he said taunt- 
ingly. 

Buddie straightened his lips. 

“What’ll you bet?” he demanded. 

As he spoke, he moved his skis forward, close to 
the top of the slope, and planted them carefully, 
side by side and with the toes slightly turning out, 
as if in jaunty preparation for a dancing step. 

“Bet you money,” Theo made comprehensive 
answer, for he too had studied skiing pictures, and 
he knew that certain of Buddie’s more useful memo- 
ries had vanished before the sudden need to use them. 
“Bet you anything you like ! ” 



“ Look at Chub! ” he roared in sudden admiration of 
his friend. Page 241. 


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A POET ON SKIS 


241 


“Done!” Buddie agreed, also comprehensively. 
And then, “By Jove, look at Chub ! ” he roared, in 
sudden admiration of his friend. 

And Tom merited the admiration. While Buddie 
and Theo had been sparring, Tom had wasted neither 
time nor nerves upon discussion. Instead, after a 
preliminary slide or two along the level, he had found 
the secret of his proper balance, had gone smoothly 
down the little slope, conveniently hidden just at 
the back of the long and densely crowded slide. To 
his extreme surprise, he landed at the bottom, safe 
and sound and, what was more, upright on his skis. 
He tried it again and without disaster. Instead, 
he was aware of a new sense of power over his thin, 
lithe body, a new-born knowledge that he could con- 
trol his muscles and that the control felt good. 
Most forms of athletics were first cousins of drudgery ; 
this was akin to flying through the air. Carefully 
and edging cornerwise, he clambered up the little 
slope and came out at the head of the long and 
crowded slide. No one had been watching him; 
scarcely any one had been aware of his existence. 
As usually happened in a crowd of boys, the atten- 
tion was wholly focussed upon Buddie Angell. Was 
it another sign of the new birth going on in Tom that 
he was rather glad to have it so ? Usually the con- 
trast drove him to a frenzy of self-consciousness. 
Now, heedless of everything but the new sport, he 
slowly plodded forward and poised himself at the 
top of the slope. The next minute, he was over the 
edge and sliding swiftly down, marvelling, as he 
did so, at the unfaltering instinct that taught him 
how to keep his balance. 


242 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


The crowd parted ahead of him, as he came down the 
slide, parted only to line up on either hand to cheer 
him as he came, his makeshift pole clasped lightly 
in his mittened hands, his head erect, his eyes aflame 
with his rapt enjoyment of his sport. The air around 
him was thick with shoutings and applause, with 
admiring comments and stentorian bellowings of 
good advice ; but Tom came sliding serenely through 
the very heart of the babel, blind to the interested 
faces, deaf to the applauding voices. In the past 
ten minutes, Chubbie Neal had found himself, found 
himself past any possibility of future loss. He 
wasn’t such an utter duffer, after all. He could do 
some things, things the boys applauded, just as well 
as Buddie. 

And it threw an interesting light upon the rela- 
tionship between the boys that Tom sought no other 
phrase to measure the extent of his superlative. 

As well as Buddie ? Yes. 

For Buddie, spurred to hasty action by his friend’s 
example, had likewise poised himself upon his skis, 
just at the top of the slide ; then, clutching his pole 
as one clutches his final slippery hope of safety, he 
had gone sliding down over the edge. Unhappily 
for him, however, not only had he started with his 
ski-toes pointed outward at what he had deemed a 
jaunty angle; but also, in a mood less of generous 
care for Tom than of a careless confidence in his own 
skiing powers, he had chosen the warped ski for his 
own. The result was full of interest for the on- 
lookers. One and all, they waited, breathless, to 
discover which ski would win out, the jaunty one, or 
the one that insisted on progressing in a series of 


A POET ON SKIS 


243 


serpentine wriggles which would have disconcerted 
any expert, in or out of Norway. 

The end was inevitable, of course, although, by 
some miracle, Buddie was able to stave it off till the 
last possible minute, to stave it off, indeed, till the 
exact minute which landed him on top of Theo. And 
Theo, who was taking advantage of the general in- 
terest in Buddie to struggle to his feet once more : Theo, 
in the course of his own evolutions, had turned his 
back to the top of the slide. He went down as before 
an avalanche, without in the least realizing what had 
struck him. By boy instinct, he clutched at the 
avalanche, as he went down, dragging it after him ; 
and together, rolling, kicking, plunging, they landed 
at the foot of the slope, a welter of boys and skis and 
snowshoes, and tatters of Miss Myles’s knitted scarlet 
shawl. 

It took only a minute for the two boys to recover 
their senses and let go their mutual grip ; but it took 
ten to free them from their unaccustomed footgear 
and hoist them to an upright stand once more. Bud- 
die halted to administer first aid to his damaged nose, 
before he spoke. At last, — 

“My bet!” he said vaingloriously. And then 
he added, with an admiration born of his tortured 
muscles, “That Chub is a one-er, certain sure! 
Theo, we’ve got to face the music, and confess he 
isn’t half the ass he seems.” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 

F rom frequent tellings, everybody knows that 
straws show which way the wind blows. Not so 
many people are aware, though, that a straw, 
dropped unexpectedly into a crack, can change the 
whole direction of a draft. 

Just why Tom’s successful venture on a pair of 
home-made skis should have changed and broadened 
his entire horizon; whether the broadening came 
from the skiing itself, or from the capital ski story 
that found its way into the second number of The 
Sesquipedalian News: this was one of the secrets of 
Tom’s existence which nobody, not even himself, 
could ferret out. Anyway, the appearing of that 
second number of the News had the effect of focussing 
the school gaze upon Tom. Instead of being demora- 
lized completely by the sense of being in the public 
eye, he took his honours with a calmness which carried 
him several steps farther up the ladder that led into 
the good graces of Buddie Angell. 

“Queer thing, too,” Buddie commented to Daddy. 
“He used to go off his head, when people watched 
him ; either bungle things, or get too talky. Now he 
doesn’t seem to care. I verily believe he’s more in- 
terested in watching for another snow storm than he 
is in all the things the other fellows are saying about 
him.” 


244 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 245 


“Much more healthy,” Daddy suggested. 

Buddie wrinkled his nose, in silent contradiction. 

“Disappointment is bad for the heart,” he said; 
“and it’s late in the year for snows. He’d much 
better sun himself in his present popularity.” 

“Is he popular ?” 

Buddie smiled at the poker, for he was in his 
favourite place upon the hearth-rug, prodding at the 
fire. 

“You bet he is! The boys are calling him a 
second O. Henry and a third Kipling,” he said con- 
tentedly. “Too much praise may not be good for 
little Thomas ; but it’s making the News go off like 
hot buttered cakes.” 

“Glad of it. I had my hours of being afraid you 
would drag me into bankruptcy,” Daddy said, as he 
dug into his pockets for his gloves and fitted them on 
with care, after his habit when he dreaded going out 
again, and tried to prolong his rest hour to its utmost 
limit. “However, Buddie, I’m not so sure a little 
praise will be too bad for Tom.” 

“Make him no end pleased with himself, though.” 

“Yes,” the doctor assented grudgingly, or so it 
seemed to Buddie. 

“And he never had any especial need of that.” 

Daddy shook his head, as he rose. 

“It’s one thing, Buddie, to be conceited on general 
principles and about nothing in particular. It’s 
quite a different matter to know you have it in you 
to do some one thing really well. One upsets you. 
The other keeps you straining to do the thing again 
and do it better. For my part, I’m glad that Tom is 
waking up.” 


246 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


“Daddy!” Buddie pivoted about to face him. 
“You, too?” 

“A little, Buddie.” 

“You never let on,” Buddie rebuked him. 

The doctor looked down at his son, and laughed. 

“Buddie, I’ve never found out that it helped a bad 
matter to discuss it.” 

“N-no.” Buddie wagged his head at the tongs 
before him. “Maybe not the thing itself; but 
it’s powerful comforting to the other victims. All 
in all. Daddy, you’ve been acting like a fraud.” 

Daddy’s laugh would have been a shock to 
poor Miss Myles, could she have heard it. To 
her mind, Buddie often deserved rebuke for lack of 
reverence. 

Instead, — 

“No matter now,” the doctor reassured him. 
“I suspect the worst of it is over.” 

As a matter of course, Buddie flung a disagreement 
after his departing father. Then, the door closed 
behind him, Buddie swung about again to face the 
fire, and threw one arm across the neck of the drowsy 
Ebenezer. For a good half-hour he sat there, 
pondering his father’s parting words. In the end, 
reviewing all things, he decided he agreed with 
Daddy. The worst was over certainly. Looking 
back on the last month with Chubbie, contrasting 
it with the many months which had gone before, 
Buddie could hot fail to feel the difference. Neither 
could he fail to date the starting of that difference. 
It had begun, the night they had plunged into 
making skis; begun then, not the night when he, 
Buddie, his conscience active but his tongue in his 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 247 


cheek, had sought out Tom and tried to march, 
unbidden, into the middle of his interests. Hm- 
m-mm ! Buddie’s meditative murmur waked an 
answering growl from Ebenezer. Then the gray- 
head sank back again upon the rug, and Buddie 
went on with his meditations. Started the night 
Tom had started to help him make the skis ! For 
the once, then. Aunt Julia had been dead wrong in 
her reckoning. She had said that Buddie must 
come to Tom, not Tom to Buddie. Queer for Aunt 
Julia not to know any better than that ! For it 
never would have occurred to Buddie that what 
Aunt Julia called the coming might lie as much in 
holding the doors wide open as in the actual taking 
the steps that led up to the doors. 

Instead, he merely lost himself in wondering just 
what it was that really had happened. Tom was 
getting to be good fun, getting to do things, instead 
of mooning around with a book in his hand, poky 
and rather bored. In fact, it had been Tom, not 
Buddie, who had suggested trying out a set of dia- 
grams for lacrosse sticks, and then of getting up a 
team. And Tom’s ski story surely was a go. 

“In fact,” David Kent said to Father Gibson, one 
night in that same week ; “I feel rather as if I might 
be privileged to say T told you so.’” 

Father Gibson nodded. 

“Say it, Davie. I knew you wouldn’t rest, until 
you had had it out, and gleaned congratulations. 
However — ” 

“You think he won’t hold out ?” Kent queried just 
a little anxiously, for he was by no means minded to 
have his inspiration fail him, after his brilliant start. 


248 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Father Gibson lighted his pipe. Then he waved 
away his friend’s interruption. 

“However, you may remember that you stopped 
short at the talking, Davie. It was Buddie Angell 
who really did the deed.” 

Kent laughed. 

“All hail to Buddie, then ! He has surely hatched 
the ugly ducklings with success.” 

“Ducklings?” Father Gibson’s accent was on 
the plural sign. 

“Porter was another. You say he is coming 
around most gloriously.” 

“Better than the other. There was more need 
of it ; therefore, once he realized the fact, he gripped 
his chances all the harder. The worst thing about 
the Neal sort of ugly duckling is that he never really 
takes in the fact that his own ugliness is at the back 
of all his troubles.” 

Kent was more hopeful. 

“ Give him time, Gibson. It is something that he 
is finding out that the world holds more than one 
set of weights and scales. He has started on the 
right track. He must go on.” 

“It will take any amount of goading, Davie.” 
Father Gibson spoke with a discouragement he 
never permitted himself to show the boys. And 
then, “What started him, I wonder,” he added 
thoughtfully. 

Kent laughed. He saw deeper into boyhood, 
every now and then, than Father Gibson did, for all 
his long experience. 

“Merely this, I take it,” he replied. “All at once 
and to his amazement, he discovered that he could 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 249 


beat Buddie at one of his own games. The dis- 
covery came just in the nick of time to be a saving 
tonic. Else, he’d have hardened to the very prince 
of prigs.” 

“Don’t holler till you’re out of the woods, Davie.” 

“I’m not. Watch and see.” 

That selfsame week, Madge Graeme was to have a 
birthday. Quite naturally, it was a great event for 
all the Graeme household. Only daughters were not 
fifteen, every day in the week. In consequence, 
everybody from Mr. Graeme down to the footman 
who had carried Madge pickaback in her babyhood, 
everybody in the Graeme household was agog to 
carry out her wishes for her celebration, once her 
plans were formed. 

The trouble was to decide on anything quite nice 
enough. Early in the winter, Madge had set her 
heart upon another dance, a large one. That, 
though, was before her cousin’s accident had put 
dancing out of the question for him for some time 
to come. In fact, it was before she had learned to 
think much about her cousin, one way or the other. 
Even now, her mother had supposed the dance to be 
a settled fact; and it was only when she began to 
plan details that Mrs. Graeme found out her error. 
Madge’s veto of the dance idea was firm and final. 

“But Algy can’t, you know,” she gave, as her sole 
reason. 

“I know, dear child. But, after all — ” 

Madge’s lips straightened. 

“Mumsie dear, do you suppose I’d give a dancing 
party, when I knew he couldn’t come ?” 

“He could come. Of course, you’d want him.” 


250 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Then the brown eyes flashed. 

“Come!” she echoed disdainfully. “Yes, and 
sit around and look on, and see us waltz past him. 
That would be nice for him. I never thought it of 
you, mumsie.” And the disdain grew rebukeful. 

Not unnaturally, Mrs. Graeme sought to defend 
herself. After all, her crime had been the com- 
paratively slight one of thinking her daughter’s 
birthday celebration ought to be for her daughter’s 
enjoyment, not for that of Algernon Valentine Porter, 
however deserving of enjoyment Algernon Valentine 
might be. 

“But Algy wouldn’t want you to be giving up 
your dance on his account,” she said. 

“He needn’t know I’m doing it. He can just 
think I’ve changed my mind.” 

“Really and truly, Madge,” her mother urged; 
“I think there’s no need. Algy can’t expect you to 
give up your fun, just because he broke his leg, play- 
ing football. You might as well say he shouldn’t 
have been playing football, for fear it might upset 
your dance.” 

Madge turned upon her mother, with a sudden 
flash of temper. 

“I may be an only child, and spoiled, mumsie; 
but I do hope I’m not so piggish as all that.” And 
then the fire went out of the brown eyes completely, 
as Madge added, “Besides, you can’t seem to realize 
that it would ruin all the fun of my party, if Algy had 
to sit outside it and look on. No, mumsie; we’ll 
do it in some other way.” 

She paused a minute, pondering those other ways, 
then she looked up again, and started to speak. 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 251 


Instead, reading the look of puzzlement in her 
mother’s face, she crossed the room and snuggled 
down beside her mother’s chair. 

“Mumsie dear,” she said; ‘‘I truly didn’t mean 
to be so cross, especially when you are trying to 
help me out and plan the nicest thing to do. But 
generally you understand things, without much 
telling, and I suppose I was disappointed because you 
didn’t understand things now. You see, I’m a real 
dour Scotsman ; I hate like mad to ’fess up, when I’ve 
made a big mistake. And I have made a mistake 
about Algy, a big, big, big mistake. I used to take 
him in, just because I had to. I didn’t even try to 
know him, till Buddie Angell set me the example. 
Now I do know him, though, I’ve found out that I 
can’t possibly get on without him. You’d under- 
stand it better, if you ever had been there to see.” 

And, in the end, the birthday dance, with all its 
glories, was given up for the sake of Algy, and a 
dinner planned to take its place. Porter, when he 
heard of the change by way of Buddie, was loud in 
the expressions of his rebellion. 

“Don’t be an ass, Madge !” he ordered his cousin, 
with a frankness quite alien to the polite remoteness 
of their earlier relations. “A dance is any amount 
more fun.” 

“All right,” Madge said serenely. “I’ll have one, 
as soon as you can give me the first two-step. That 
is,” she added, with a caustic glance at Buddie; “if 
I can get my guests to come inside.” 

“Not me,” Buddie put in, in parenthesis; but 
Madge, for the once, paid no attention to him, for, — 

“Don’t wait,” Porter bade her. “My stick and 


252 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


I are likely to be chums for a good while yet, from all 
appearances; but that’s no reason you should give 
up dancing.” 

“I’m a girl,” Madge told him, with unshaken 
serenity. “I don’t have reasons, only whims. 
My whim now is for a dinner, a great, big dinner, 
with things happening afterwards. Daddy has any 
amount of splendid plans. Besides,” her serenity 
all gone, she wheeled suddenly and slid her fingers 
through her cousin’s arm ; “it would break my heart 
to fragments, Algy, to have my birthday dance 
going on, and you not in it.” 

The sleeve drew a bit tighter across the fingers. 
Then Algy turned to look down at his cousin with an 
expression which blinded her completely to the 
smudge of printers’ ink upon his nearer cheekbone. 

“I say, Madge,” he said slowly; “I never sup- 
posed I counted so much as all that.” 

“You do to me, Algy,” she said tempestuously. 
“What’s more, I begin to think it was all my fault 
that I was so slow to find it out.” 

Porter’s hands were full of proof sheets. Now 
they went slithering to the fioor. 

A little silence followed the rustling of the papers. 
Then Buddie broke the silence with a violent sneeze. 
An instant afterward, with elaborate care, he drew 
out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. 

“Please do go on,” he begged them. “Really, 
it’s so pretty.” 

That broke the spell, and brought them crashing 
down from their sentimental heights. Madge 
laughed. Then she fell to counting on her fingers. 

“Mumsie says I’d better plan for thirty. Algy 


BOTH DUCKLINGS ARE HATCHED 253 


will have to sit at the other end, and play the host, 
so I suppose you’ll have to stay next me, Buddie.” 

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Buddie bowed low. 
“Who else?” 

“Oh, Theo, and Chubbie, and — why, all the boys 
we know. The worst of it is, I’m afraid I’m going 
to be rather short of girls.” 

Buddie attempted an extra agile flight of gallantry. 

“’Spose you are ? As long as you let me sit next 
you, it won’t make any great amount of diff.” 

Madge, though, was too busy with her plans, now 
she was really started, to applaud this sudden burst 
of devotion. 

“Let — me — see,” she said slowly. “Algy, and 
you, and Tom — Give me your pencil, Algy. I 
must count.” 

For fully flve minutes, she counted industriously, 
if one might judge by the way her pencil flew. Then 
it flagged in its speed, faltered, stopped entirely, 
and Madge pondered, her brow puckered into a 
knot, her white teeth denting the official pencil with 
row after row of dots. At last, though, the pucker 
left her brows, her face cleared, and she nodded in 
swift decision. 

“The very thing!” she said. “What a dunce 
not to have thought of it before!” And then, 
quite nonchalantly, she added, “By the way, Buddie, 
when will your father be at home ? Mother wants 
to ask him something or other on the telephone.” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


Buddie’s broken nose 

“TF you really think they would understand it. 

J- You don’t think they would take it wrong? 
Yes, on a Saturday. You will explain ? Thank you 
so much. Her heart was so set on it that I hated to 
disappoint her. Thank you more than I can tell. 
Of course, you’ll come. Good-bye.” And the 
telephone rang off. 

Two days later, Madge ventured an utterance on 
that same theme. 

“Just suppose Buddie should funk again!” she 
said to her Pom puppy. 

Events had been crowding fast since the holidays ; 
not trust investigations and European politics and 
the other things that one reads of in the papers, 
but the things that really count, school things and 
the like. Not least among these was the new attitude 
of the boys to Porter and to Tom. Porter, shorn of 
his smugness and equipped with a stout ash stick. 
Porter in his capacity of Editor-in-Chief for The 
Sesquipedalian News, Porter was striding fast towards 
popularity. Buddie, watchful and content, attrib- 
uted the change to the chastening effect of a broken 
bone; but the boys, seeing from a wider viewpoint 
and always ready to give Buddie his own fair share 
of credit, declared in chorus that it was Buddie’s 
grip on him that had worked the miracle. 

254 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 


255 


In any case, it seemed a miracle to Porter, subject 
and object of the change. It was a bit dazing to 
step so suddenly from absolute unpopularity into 
general liking. Too many boys would have lost 
their heads in the process; but Porter had learned 
his lesson once for all. Unpopularity hurt. And 
even the edges of a new-born popularity could be 
held only by one who walked meekly in the critical 
gaze of his fellows, who took their favour, not as a 
right, but as a priceless and unearned gift. In some 
ways, the first weeks of the opening year were the 
hardest ones that Porter had ever known. Like 
the other boys, he gave the credit of the change 
to Buddie’s influence. Unlike the other boys, 
he knew full well the depths that would follow 
the withdrawing of that influence, follow his own 
failure to make good. But Buddie did not with- 
draw his influence; and Porter, forging slowly, 
steadily ahead, by some miracle or other did make 
good. 

As for Tom, the change, while not so sudden nor 
so violent, was all the harder to get used to, for all 
that. Whereas Porter, at a leap, had gone from the 
extreme of unpopularity to something very like a 
general popularity, Tom was slowly struggling from 
his place as total nonentity into a hint of recognition. 
Buddie had been in part responsible for this; in 
part it had been due to Theo, who had appeared 
at school, the Monday following the skiing in the 
Park, acclaiming Chubbie Neal as the champion 
skier of the city. The nickname spoke volumes. 
By noon, a good half of the boys were using it. A 
week later, the Tom had vanished utterly, save at 


256 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


the foot of certain themes which had to be handed 
in to the masters. 

Up to now, Tom had been ranked as a duffer, 
and left to lurk in corners. Now the fact that he 
could do one thing well, one thing, that is, besides 
subjunctives and the silly diagrams in geometry, 
made the boys interested to discover whether he 
could not do something else passably. And boys in 
school have a trick of finding anything they set out 
in earnest to discover. By the end of the second 
week, a congress of them, met in Theo’s bedroom, 
were talking over a dozen possibilities for Chubbie’s 
being made useful to the school. And then the 
second number of the News came out, and the boys, 
even the unbelieving, fell down at Chubbie’s feet. 

Of course, being Chubbie, he lost his head com- 
pletely, for a time. There was the difference between 
him and Porter. To be sure. Porter, underneath 
his smile, had chafed bitterly under the general dis- 
like of which he had been the centre ; the chafing had 
taught him humility. Chubbie, on the other hand, 
had never chafed. He merely had gone his way, 
alone, without violently objecting to the loneliness. 
Rather, he had taken it as tribute to his superiority. 
Now he took the general enthusiasm as another 
tribute, and became insufferable. Still, it was a 
healthy sign; and Buddie and Theo undertook to 
lick it out of him. Up to that hour, they never had 
thought of him as being worth the effort. Even 
now, they did it less for Chubbie’s sake than for the 
sake of the school, by way of The Sesquipedalian 
News, 

For the News was well upon its feet by now. If 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 


257 


the next number were the equal of the two earlier 
ones, it would find it marching strongly. Not that 
it satisfied any long-felt want. Up to the hour of 
Buddie’s suggesting it, not a single boy in the school 
had had the slightest longing for a paper. Now they 
were wondering how they ever had been able to get 
on without it. Half of the boys were out in search 
of news to fill its columns; the other half were 
shedding ink galore over the tales, tales of detectives 
and tales of unmitigated gore, which were to add the 
literary flavour that is the rightful share of any 
monthly. Porter, had he chosen, could easily have 
filled a daily from the stream of contributions which 
poured into his sanctum. 

Indeed, just at the start, he did suggest a weekly. 
After one consultation with Father Gibson, though, 
he changed his mind. A week afterward. Father 
Gibson came near upsetting his hardly-maintained 
poise, by having him to tea in his room, to meet 
David Kent and talk over with him the conditions 
of the prize. Porter walked on air, for the next day 
or two. Probably, in the end, he would have tripped 
and fallen down to earth with a crash, had he not 
had the good luck to be spending an evening with 
Madge. And Madge, noticing his elation, noticing, 
too, more than a hint of his old manner, put a dozen 
searching questions. Then, on pretext of anxiety 
about her puppy’s bedtime meal, she coaxed her 
cousin to toil with her down the steep stairs leading 
to the basement. There, her anxiety allayed, she 
took forcible possession of her cousin’s stick, left 
him marooned upon the bottom step until a little 
of the cockiness had gone out of him; and then, 


258 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


making him sit down beside her, she turned her 
face to his, and rated him soundly. 

In the end, though, — 

“Algy, I’ve been a beast,” she said contritely; 
“but honestly I had to. IVe been so happy lately, 
and I couldn’t sit still and see you spoiling things, 
once they were coming right. It was a mean trick, 
though, to take advantage of you, and put you in a 
trap like this. Yes,” for he flushed a little, because 
his slow recovery had been hard on his boyish pride ; 
“I knew it would hurt you. But I only hurt the 
people I care about, and only when I think the 
hurt will make them more worth while.” 

Her brown eyes were very grave and steadfast, 
as she spoke ; they carried healing to Porter’s mind. 
He needed it, too. Madge had hurt him, though, 
now it was over, he saw the wholesome tonic in the 
hurt. And really he had said we a little bit too often, 
considering the years and the reputation of his 
fellow guest. Once on a time, under such discipline, 
he would have lifted up his chin, and flushed, and 
turned sarcastic. Now he said, with gratifying 
meekness, — 

“All right, Madge. I suppose it was what I 
needed.” But his face made up for any reservations 
in his speech. 

Soberly she rose. Soberly she hunted up his stick 
and brought it back to him. Soberly she studied 
him for a minute, standing before him, slim and 
straight. Then her girlish enthusiasm swept over 
her completely. 

“Oh, Algy, it is so good to have you around, to 
lecture,” she said, as she dropped down again beside 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 


259 


him and shut her hand caressingly around his stick. 
“I’ve always wanted to have a brother; but you’re 
getting to be the next best thing. And then, you 
know,” she wriggled closer to his side; “you’ve 
always needed a sister, just to bring you up.” 

“Yes, Madge, I have.” 

And his fingers shut on hers, around his stout and 
ugly stick. 

And Buddie, meanwhile ? Blooming like a hardy 
bramble. 

Life, Buddie would have proclaimed, had he been 
questioned, was very good to him, that winter. 
There was Daddy, and there was Aunt Julia, and 
there was Mr. Kent’s gymnasium ; for, now that the 
long artist had recovered his old-time agility, other 
interests lost much of their charm for Buddie, 
beside the wonderful new trapeze which he had 
ordered out from Paris. Buddie spent all his odd 
minutes in Mr. Kent’s gymnasium, nowadays, to 
the detriment of his subjunctives and the delay of 
the electric motor he was attaching to the bread- 
mixer downstairs at home, to the detriment, too, of 
certain winter studies of the Park which David Kent 
had set himself to finish before the break of spring. 
Instead, Kent was working in his spare time at a 
new portrait of Buddie. It was done from memory, 
without the knowledge of his model; yet the few 
brother artists who had seen it were predicting that 
it would add the final touch to all Kent’s fame. 

But these were interests outside of school, as was 
also Buddie’s growing intimacy with Chubbie Neal. 
Nowadays, inside the house, the two boys did things 
together. Nowadays, when Buddie worked at his 


260 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


constructions, Tom, clumsier with his fingers, held 
the book and explained the diagrams and gave advice. 
Nowadays, when Tom produced a story, he brought 
it first of all to Buddie for suggestion and, if Buddie 
thought wise, for pruning. Of course, being human, 
they disagreed occasionally; of course, now and 
again they fought. But even the fighting was more 
wholesome than the old aloofness. 

“Yes,” Buddie confided to Madge, one day ; “I’m 
having just a corking time of it, this term. If I only 
had Teresa living somewhere in the next block — ” 

“Well?” 

“I’d feel as if I were sitting upon the rosy steps of 
heaven ! ” he responded, with one of the flowers of 
poesy which, at intervals, blossomed on the sturdy 
stalks of his conversation. 

Madge looked at him cornerwise. 

“Get that from Chubbie ?” she queried. 

“No. I did it, mineself. I can do better, when 
I’m in the mood.” 

“I wouldn’t. It’s not safe. But, about Teresa: 
do you honestly care so much for her as all that ?” 

“More than any girl I ever saw,” Buddie made 
uncompromising answer. 

“Nice boy ! Don’t spare my feelings for the sake 
of manners,” Madge rebuked him ; but she smiled, 
as she spoke, as if at some secret thought. 

Buddie’s earnestness completely blinded him to 
the smile. 

“I like Teresa Hamilton better than any girl 
I’ve ever known,” he repeated unflinchingly. “ She’s 
chum and sister, rolled into one. You’re different.” 

And Madge, strangely enough, was quite content. 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 


261 


Her content lasted, all that day and the next. 
Then it was shattered, shattered with the shattering 
of Buddie’s nose. Now a nose is a most ignoble 
feature ; but it can hold a most astonishing amount 
of pain, as Buddie was finding to his cost. Indeed, 
it seemed to him impossible it should not be swollen 
to ten times its usual size, impossible that its present 
dimensions could contain so much of ache and 
anguish. For, the very next evening, two evenings 
before Madge’s birthday dinner party, Ebenezer, 
always clumsy, had fallen on a slippery sidewalk, 
and Buddie had fallen headlong over him. Eben- 
ezer, padded with his winter coat, had come out, 
unhurt; Buddie had wrecked his nose completely. 
It had hurt abominably, too, hurt his body and also 
hurt his pride. A broken nose is always ignomin- 
ious ; no one ever gives it the same serious pity that 
is bestowed on any other broken bone. Besides, 
other broken bones are so much larger that the ache 
has room to spread out a bit, and ease up a little 
on the critical spot. 

Tom telephoned to Madge, that night. Early 
next morning, the Graeme car was stopping at the 
Angell door. It would be hard to say just what 
acute form of invalidism Madge had expected ; but 
she looked decidedly relieved to find Buddie, albeit 
with his nose a mass of plaster, eating breakfast 
with every symptom of a lusty appetite. Where- 
fore, instead of offering proper sympathy, Madge 
sank into a chair, declaring, — 

“Oh, Buddie, I’m so relieved ! ” 

“You are; are you?” Buddie had not slept 
much, and his accent was pugnacious. “Thanks.” 


262 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


Madge continued callous. 

“Yes. I was so afraid you couldn’t come.” 

“I can’t,” Buddie told her, upon general princi- 
ples; and then, “Come where he queried. 

All in all, considering the importance of the great 
event, it was no especial wonder that Madge looked, 
as she felt, aggrieved. 

“To my dinner party,” she reminded him a little 
sternly. 

Buddie had the grace to blush. Even behind his 
aching nose, he was fond of Madge, and loath to 
hurt her. 

“I’d forgotten, Madge. You see, this sort of 
knocked me silly,” he said apologetically. 

“Did it hurt so very much?” Madge asked him. 

Her voice irritated Buddie; it was business-like. 
To be sure, it is not possible to be tenderly sen- 
timental over a broken nose; but Buddie had not 
experienced a broken nose till then, and did not 
know its limitations. 

“Like the very deuce,” he said shortly. “Hurts 
now.” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“How did you know ?” 

“Tom telephoned.” 

“And you came, right off ? You are a good soul, 
Madge.” Only Buddie’s eyes could show his pleas- 
ure ; the expression of the remainder of his counte- 
nance was chiefly hidden behind his injured nose. 

“Yes. I wanted to see for myself how bad it 
was,” she told him. 

Buddie reddened. For all his haphazard ways, 
he had his streaks of vanity. 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 263 

“Well, you’re seeing. How do you like the 
looks ?” 

Madge read his irritation by his tone. She 
resolved to be extra tactful. 

“Considering what an awful hurt it wa — ” 
swiftly she corrected herself ; “is, it doesn’t show so 
very much. I’m so glad, for it won’t spoil your 
coming to my party.” 

Buddie reddened more. Then he glowered. 

“I? Hh!” he said. 

“Oh, but you must,” she urged him. 

“It’s likely I will, with my nose in a sling,” he 
told her. 

She looked strangely disappointed. 

“Oh, Buddie, you won’t fail me?” she besought 
him. 

“Much I won’t ! ” 

“But why?” 

“Suppose I’d go to a party, with my nose like a 
prize cabbage and all over plaster?” he demanded. 

“But everybody knows you.” 

“Not as I look now. I’d give them bad dreams 
for a month,” he said, with no small amount of truth. 

Madge fibbed bravely. Not for a little matter of 
accuracy could she have her favourite plan come to 
naught. 

“Truly and honestly, Buddie, it doesn’t look too 
very bad. Of course, it hurts you; there’s no 
getting out of the ache of it. I’m so sorry, about it, 
too, more sorry than I’ve any words to tell it in. 
But, about the looks : everybody knows you, 
Buddie, and won’t think a thing about it. Besides,” 
she looked up at him, appealing, cajoling, smiling 


264 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


back the tears of disappointment which hung very 
near to falling down; “besides, Buddie, we are 
such chums, and you know I can’t be fifteen but 
once.” 

In the end, Buddie yielded. How could he help 
it ? He sent away a cheery, chattering Madge, 
quite unlike the one who had appeared to him, a 
half hour earlier. Next night, though, he would 
have changed his mind and broken his promise, 
had not Madge craftily sent Porter to fetch him. 
Porter had come, armed with encouragement and a 
powder-puff stolen from his mother’s dressing table. 
There had been hot argument, even a little bit of 
force. Then Porter went away again, bearing a 
resentful and pugnacious Buddie in his keeping. 

Alternate scuffles and efforts to beautify a broken 
nose by means of such an unfamiliar weapon as a 
powder-puff : these things take time. Buddie and 
Porter were the last arrivals ; they went up the 
steps just behind the vaudeville people who were to 
provide the entertainment, later on. Madge met 
them on the threshold, a gorgeous Madge in a frilly 
frock and satin slippers. She gripped her cousin’s 
hand hard, but without a word. Then she gave a 
searching look at Buddie’s face. 

“Splendid, Buddie!” she fibbed once more. 
“It hardly shows at all. We began to think, 
though, that you never were coming. You know 
Mr. Hearn ? ” Her tone was as casual as if the tall, 
red-headed youth at her side had not been included 
in her plans at the last moment. “Yes, of course. 
You were in camp together. We’re just ready to go 
in to dinner, Buddie. I saw the girl you’re taking 


BUDDIE’S BROKEN NOSE 


265 


in, only a minute ago, walking into the library. Do 
you mind — ” 

“That depends,” Buddie cut in prudently. Then 
he put the question, “Who is she, Madge?” 

But Madge had gone, taking Hearn with her. 
Buddie could see the two red heads in the middle of 
a knot of pretty girls, and, all things and his broken 
nose considered, he decided not to follow Madge up 
to repeat his question. 

As a matter of course, Buddie knew the geography 
of the Graeme house like a book. It was six months 
now, since he had first crossed its threshold, drip- 
ping. Long ago, he had become its frequent guest. 
Now, though the library was his real destination, 
he went first to a coatroom, opening from the hall, 
a room he knew to hold a mirror. In the mirror, he 
studied himself intently. 

“Pretty rank, Buddie, my son !” And he shook 
his head at the refiection. “Still, it might be worser, 
and maybe she’s not a beauty, herself.” 

But she was, or something infinitely better, a tall, 
lithe girl of seventeen, with a comely face framed in 
heavy braids of yellow hair, and happy, honest brown 
eyes, just now shining with eager welcome : in short, 
Teresa. 

“Buddie ! Dear old boy !” 

“Teresa! Well, I’ll be — ” 

“Don’t ! ” Teresa warned him, as her outstretched 
hands were crumpled into the grip of Buddie’s sturdy 
fists. “It would be an awful waste of opportunity, 
because I’ve come to stay three weeks.” 

In the end, Madge had to come to fetch them. 
Hearn came with her. In the general laugh and 


266 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 


chatter over the surprise, Madge apparently forgot 
a fraction of her carefully constructed plans. When 
they walked away again, Hearn, quite as a matter of 
course, had taken his place at Teresa’s side, and was 
gazing down at her with a look, half of protection, 
half of boundless pride. 

Nevertheless, Buddie, quite to his own surprise, 
lined up at Madge’s elbow without a thought of 
envy. Madge was Madge. Likewise, she was 
Porter’s cousin, and had helped them both through 
some strenuous hours. But the hours were ended 
now and, with them, their responsibilities, and 
Buddie felt it was his right to go in for the good 
time bound to come after. 

Despite his broken nose, then, his face was quite 
serene as he gazed a minute after his loyal, well-tried 
chum ; then, with a laugh, he turned to answer Madge, 
just falling into step beside him. 


THE END 



/ 
























“ The Buddie Books'* 


BUDDIE : 

THE STORY OF A BOY 


By ANNA CHAPIN RAY 
Author of “ The Teddy Books,” “ The Sidney Books,” etc. 
Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. $1.50 


That Miss Ray can write capital stories for girls, readers have 
long been pleasantly aware. That she can write for boys quite 
as acceptably, “ Buddie,” the initial volume of “ The Buddie 
Books ” affords abundant testimony. . . . The working of bov 
nature and girl nature is admirably contrasted in Miss Ray’s 
pages . — Boston Herald. 

Both boys and girls will be deeply interested in nearly 300 
pages brimful with unexpected happenings. — Chicago Post. 

By the same author 

BUDDIE AT GRAY BUTTES CAMP 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. $1.50 

The second book in that delightful “ Buddie ” series, and it 
is just as good as the first one, as fresh and happy and 
wholesome. — Chicago Tribune. 

By the same author 

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUDDIE 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. $1.50 

This the last of the “ Buddie Books ” brings together in New 
York for a final good time Buddie and his several friends who 
have some exciting adventures, among which are a shipwreck, 
school games, a “party” and the launching of a school paper. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
34 Beacon Street, Boston 


ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S 

“SIDNEY” STORIES 


SIDNEY: HER SUMMER ON THE 
ST. LAWRENCE 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50 

The young heroine is a forceful little maiden of sweet sixteen. The description 
of picnics in the pretty Canadian country are very gay and enticing, and Sidney 
and her friends are a merry group of wholesome young people. 

— Churchman^ New York. 

JANET: HER WINTER IN QUEBEC 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50 

Gives a delightful picture of Canadian life, and introduces a group of young people 
who are bright and wholesome and good to read about. — New York Globe. 

DAY: HER YEAR IN NEW YORK 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

A good story, bright, readable^ cheerful, natural, free from sentimentality. 

— New York Sun* 

SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

The book is replete with entertaining incidents of a young woman who is passiiig 
through her freshman year at college. — Brooklyn Eagle. 

JANET AT ODDS 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. ^^1.50 

An ideal book for an American girl. It directs a girPs attention to something 
beside the mere conventional side of life. It teaches her to be self-reliant. Its 
atmosphere is hopeful and helpful. — Boston Globe. 

SIDNEY: HER SENIOR YEAR 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50 

This delightful story completes the author’s charming and popular series ol 
Sidney Books. Day, Janet, and a host of their bright friends meet again at Smith 
College, where Sidney is the President of the Senior Class, and their gayety filj 
the pages with spirited incidents. 


LITTLE, BROWN, y COMPANY, Publishers 

34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 


The “Donald Kirk*' Series 


DOMLD KIRK 

THE MORNING RECORD COPY-BOY 

By EDWARD MOTT WOOLLEY 

Illustrated by George Varian. $1.20 net 

The young reader while reading an absorbing tale will learn 
something of the continual stress under which newspaper work 
is conducted. — Chicago Post. 

The author knows the interior of a newspaper office well and 
describes events faithfully. . . We are glad to commend the 
book highly . — Providence Journal. 

An interesting and accurate enough account of life in the 
office of a metropolitan newspaper. . . A rattling good story of 
the sort boys revel in . — Philadelphia Press. 

By the same author 

DONALD KIRK 

THE MORNING RECORD CORRESPONDENT 

Illustrated by George Varian. $1.20 net 


This second volume in the “Donald Kirk” Series shows the 
hero’s life at Larchw'ood Academy, a preparatory school on the 
Hudson, where he acts as school correspondent to the “ Morning 
Record.” Here he does reporting on his own responsibility, and 
when he is ignominiously scooped, he tries to retrieve himself by 
some daring ventures to get news. His year’s experiences help 
to sharpen his wits, strengthen his self-reliance and broaden his 
sympathies, and his friends and acquaintances will find him a 
fine, manly youth, well worth reading about. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
34 Beacon Street, Boston 


Schoolboy Adi'entures, Athletic and Otherwise 


HENLEY 

SCHOOLBOYS SERIES 


By FRANK E. CHANNON 


1. An American Boy at Henley 

2. Jackson and His Henley Friends 

3. Henley’s American Captain 

4. Henley on the Battle Line 


Illustrated. Cloth. $1.50 each 


T his series has a distinctive character, inasmuch as it 
brings to the fore conditions of school life in England. 
— Christian Register^ Boston. 

The adventures of Roger Jackson, the American boy at an 
English school, are full of action and complications incident 
upon the unraveling of a mystery. — Boston Transcript. 

Mr. Channon writes well, makes his characters natural, and 
combines with the story sound information about English 
school life to ballast the book. — Chicago Record-Herald. 

Frank E. Channon has done quite a brilliant thing in dis- 
covering a new setting for a schoolboy story. . . . The hero 
is a lad from the United States, who is sent to one of the big 
English public schools. — Springfield Republican. 

Roger Jackson, the hero, is a manly fellow and a good 
sportsman. This type always appeals to the healthy-minded 
boy ; but when a series of adventures develop, the combina- 
tion is bound to be irresistible. — Philadelphia Press. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 


34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON 








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JAN 86 


N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 



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